Badger (Taxidea taxus) Mounds Affect Soil Hydrological Properties in a Degraded Shrub-Steppe

Autor:	David J. Eldridge
Rok vydání:	2009
Předmět:	Vascular plant geography geography.geographical_feature_category biology Steppe Ecology fungi food and beverages Shrub-steppe Native plant Taxidea taxus biology.organism_classification Grassland Habitat Environmental science Overgrazing Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics
Zdroj:	The American Midland Naturalist. 161:350-358
ISSN:	1938-4238 0003-0031
Popis:	Overgrazing, weed invasion and wildfire have resulted in the conversion of large areas of shrub steppe to exotic annual grassland in the western United States. This has been accompanied by reduced habitat for native plants and animals, and altered water and nutrient flows. In these landscapes, badgers increase landscape heterogeneity by creating a mosaic of foraging pits and mounds over extensive areas while preying on fossorial animals. The effects of badger-produced mounds on infiltration and surface physical properties were examined in a mixed sagebrush (Artemisia) – winterfat (Krascheninnikovia) site in west-central Idaho. Recently constructed mounds were physically degraded (i.e., more compacted, poorly aggregated, few macropores, erodible by wind) and vascular plant and cryptogamic crust cover increased as mounds aged. Infiltration through younger mounds was about half that through older mounds or inter-mounds. The results indicate that mounds function as water shedding sites, suggesting th...
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::3d568471bd5d845117ffb55d866d5c0b https://doi.org/10.1674/0003-0031-161.2.350 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Plný text ve formátu PDF