With Trenton Franz and Dan Rubenstein, we have been monitoring 24 30-m transects on a hillslope at Koija, Kenya for 7 years. On each transect, we monitor the vegetation patch structure, composition, and soil surface condition using the Landscape Function Analysis protocol developed by Tongway, Ludwig, and Hindley in Australia. The protocol generates indices of soil stability, nutrient cycling, and infiltration. It’s amazing to see how much the patch structure changes from season to season, with grass patches blinking in and out very rapidly. We are starting to see different trajectories, and potentially different legacy effects, in the functional indices, especially following severe droughts…
Collaborators: Trenton Franz [School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska] and Dan Rubenstein [Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University]