Soil nutrients mediate initial intra-annual community dynamics in a tilled grassland

Repeated soil disturbances (e.g., tilling) and nutrient application (e.g., fertilization) common in many agricultural practices are thought to impose barriers limiting initial community reassembly. We experimentally disturbed and applied nutrients in a remnant tallgrass prairie to determine how these drivers influenced growing season trajectory of plant species richness and community composition.

To address these questions, we collected monthly growing season (April – August) plant species composition data. The enclosed data are the recorded precent species cover values (0-100%) that were visually estimated in a fixed 1 m x 1 m subplot within each 5 m x 5 m plot. Total percentage of cover of all species combined usually exceeded 100% because of overlap among conspecific plants.