| Summary: | In this 4-year study we experimentally manipulated shrub presence (shrub present or removed) and litter quantity (none, natural abundance, and 2x natural abundance) in a fully factorial design. We examined a number of response variables including; physical properties (soil temperature, soil moisture, photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and pH of both organic and mineral soil layers), nutrients (available nutrients (ammonium (NH4+), nitrate (NO3-), phosphate (PO43-)), extractable organic carbon (EOC), extractable total nitrogen (ETN), and soil total %C and %N), and microbial processes (microbial biomass (microbial biomass carbon (MBC), microbial biomass nitrogen (MBN), and microbial biomass phosphate (MBP)), extracellular enzyme (exo-enzyme) activity, nitrogen mineralization rates (N-Mineralization), and soil respiration (root + microbial respiration)). All soil and ecosystem sampling occurred during the growing season (June – August) of 2015 – 2018 with the exception of soil temperature, which was recorded year round.
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