TY - CHAP T1 - Ecological consequences of the replacement of native grassland by Juniperus virginiana and other woody plants T2 - Ecological Studies Vol. 196, Western North American Juniperus communities: A dynamic vegetation type Y1 - 2008 A1 - Alan K. Knapp A1 - McCarron, J.K. A1 - Silletti, A.M. A1 - Hoch, G.A. A1 - Heisler, J.L. A1 - Lett, M.S. A1 - John M. Blair A1 - J. M. Briggs A1 - M.D. Smith ED - Van Auken, O.W. AB -

Although grasslands have been altered by humans for thousands of years (Wedel 1961; Bond et al. 2003), the loss of grassland as a result of anthropogenic activities has increased dramatically over the past 150 years. When Europeans first settled the Midwest and Great Plains, the greatest threat to native grasslands was the conversion of the most highly productive of these ecosystems to row-crop agriculture (Samson and Knopf 1994). Later, with improvements in soil moisture management and irrigation technology, even low-productivity grasslands were plowed. Today, those remnants of the most productive grasslands that escaped the plow are threatened, as are most of Earth’s ecosystems, by a variety of global change phenomena (Vitousek et al. 1997), with the invasion and expansion of woody species into grasslands one of the greatest of these threats. The replacement of grasslands by shrubland, woodland, and forest is a concern not only in the United States but worldwide (Archer et al. 1988; Van Auken 2000; Roques et al. 2001; Silva et al. 2001). Species of woody plants that invade grasslands may include both native plants which previously existed as more minor components of the ecosystem as well as alien species (Bragg and Hulbert 1976; Harcombe et al. 1993).

JF - Ecological Studies Vol. 196, Western North American Juniperus communities: A dynamic vegetation type PB - Springer-Verlag, NY UR - https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-0-387-34003-6_8 ER -