Black sand extended growing season experiment plant species composition, from 2018 to ongoing, yearly

• Main Authors: Huxley, Jared D, Smith, Jane G, Suding, Katharine N, Spasojevic, Marko J, Brigham, Laurel M, Bueno De Mesquita, Cliff P, Niwot Ridge LTER
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Environmental Data Initiative 2020
• Subjects: Tundra
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.6073/pasta/ea53f088d7b1a6227c9fc8fec263fa48; https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/mapbrowse?packageid=knb-lter-nwt.225.2

As a result of climate change, the Rocky Mountain Front Range is experiencing warmer summers and earlier snowmelt. Due to the importance of snow for regulating soil temperature, growing season length, and available moisture in alpine ecosystems, even small shifts in the snow-free period could have large impacts. The focus of the Growing Season Length Experiment is to examine how terrain-related differences in climate exposure influence the way alpine habitats respond to climate change via earlier snowmelt. To simulate how climate exposure may affect plant species composition NWT LTER researchers established 5 experimental sites each containing a pair 10 x 40m rectangular plots. These blocks include north and south facing aspects, subalpine and alpine tundra meadows in a range of hydrological conditions (e.g. dry meadows, moist meadows, wet meadows). We accelerated snowmelt in one plot of each block by adding chemically inert black sand, while keeping the second plot as an unmanipulated control (black sand was added to these plots after snow had naturally melted). This dataset includes measurements of plant species composition.