Data from: Above-ground and below-ground responses to long-term nutrient addition across a retrogressive chronosequence ...

• Main Authors: Wardle, David A., Jonsson, Micael, Mayor, Jordan R., Metcalfe, Daniel B.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2016
• Subjects: environmental gradient; aboveground–belowground linkages; retrogression; Phosphorus; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.hm064; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.hm064

1. There is much interest in understanding ecosystem responses to local-scale soil fertility variation, which has often been studied using retrogressive chronosequences that span thousands of years and show declining fertility and plant productivity over time. There have been few attempts to experimentally test how plant nutrient limitation changes during retrogression. 2. We studied a well-characterized system of 30 forested lake islands in northern Sweden that collectively represent a 5350-year post-fire retrogressive chronosequence, with fertility and productivity decreasing as time since fire increases. For each island we set up four plots on understorey vegetation, each subjected to a different fertilizer treatment over six years: no additions, nitrogen (N) only, phosphorus (P) only, and N + P. 3. We found that both N and P additions reduced feather moss and thus total plant biomass. Meanwhile the three dominant vascular plant species showed contrasting biomass responses, but similar responses of foliar ... : Raw data for island fertilization paperAll raw data for plants, soil microbes, and ecosystem properties for island fertilization paper.islands-fertilizer-data-for-dryad.xlsx ...