Biome Productivity Exercise                                                                                                                                                                Biome Productivity Exercise The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER)

The Assignment You have been assigned to a random group of 4 students Read the first section of Knapp et al. (2004). Your group has been assigned 2 LTER sites from the LTER Primary Productivity database on the MS Excel file named: LTER anpp-precip.xls Additional information can be obtained from the following web sites: http://www.lternet.edu/ Search for patterns that describe the effect of precipitation and temperature on primary productivity Approximately 25 years worth of data are available for exploration and for plotting graphs Construct a scatter plot using Excel and copy and paste it into into PowerPoint

What to turn in. A statement of the ecological rule rule you think supports your data (e.g., as temp. increases, NPP decreases) Two graphs based on the data (Excel imported into a PowerPoint) Test the rule by comparing the figures from your LTER sites to those constructed using data from two different LTER sites Use what you know about biomes and the factors affecting primary productivity from the lecture, the web sites listed previously and the text to answer the question below. “Is the rule supported?”. If it is not supported, propose one or two reasons that could explain why not If it is supported, propose one or two other factors that were not measured or included in the database that might alter the patterns you observed in the first two LTER sites.

Deadline Create a PowerPoint presentation with no more than three slides of data on your assigned LTER Sites (be sure to include units on your graphics). In class we will do the following: I will select a few examples, which will be presented in class and used for discussion. We will examine how “ecological rules” are used to describe the behavior of ecosystems given certain boundaries. This is worth 20 points.

LTER Locations TL CC HB

Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) Sites Number Site Abrev Veg Code Vegetation Type 1 Bonanza, AK BNZ a Balsam poplar forest 2 Cedar Creek, MN CC b Oak savanna grassland 3 Harvard Forest, MA HF c Mixed deciduous forest 4 Hubbard Brook, NH HB d 5 Jornada, NM JOR e Black gramma grassland 6 Kellogg, MI KG f Successional field (annually tilled) 7 Konza Prairie, KS KNZ g Tall grass prairie (annually burned) 8 Niwot Ridge, CO NWT h Moist alpine meadow 9 Sevilleta, NM SEV i Mixed desert grassland 10 Short grass Steppe, CO SG j Short grass steppe (swale) 11 Arctic Tundra, AK TL k Arctic tundra

LTER Assignment Combinations Find your group number. It will indicate which two sites you are to compare in generating your ecological rule. Test your rule by examining the data from two different sites, and explain whether or not these sites fit the rule. BNZ CC HF HB JOR KG KNZ NWT SEV SG TL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35