Spatial Heterogeneity of Vegetation Structure, Plant N Pools and Soil N Content in Relation to Grassland Management

Abstract

Spatial heterogeneity in plant and soil properties plays a key role for biogeochemical cycling, nutrient losses and ecosystem function. Different management practices are expected to induce varying levels of spatial heterogeneity in agroecosystems, but the effects of contrasting biomass removal regimes and herbivore species on grassland variability and spatial pattern have faced little attention. We carried out a spatially-explicit sampling campaign and geostatistical analyses to quantify the spatial heterogeneity of the biomass and N in plants and soil for three management treatments (mowing, cattle grazing and sheep grazing) within a long-term grassland experiment. All plant and soil properties showed within-site variation, irrespective of management treatment. Within-site variation in plant variables could be ranked as grazing > mowing. Cattle grazing increased variability in vegetation structure, soil mineral N and soil C:N compared with sheep grazing. In addition, the cattle-grazed field had a higher degree of spatial structure and a more coarse-grained pattern of spatial heterogeneity in plant properties than the sheep-grazed field. However, both grazing treatments showed spatial asynchrony in above- and below-ground responses to grazing. These results demonstrate the importance of herbivore species identity as a driver of grassland spatial heterogeneity, with implications for spatial uncoupling of nutrient cycles at the field scale.