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Quantifying Ecosystem Controlsand Their Contextual Interactionson Nutrient Export fromDeveloping Forest Mesocosms

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Abstract

The complexity of natural ecosystems makes it difficult to compare the relative importance of abiotic and biotic factors and to assess the effects of their interactions on ecosystem development. To improve our understanding of ecosystem complexity, we initiated an experiment designed to quantify the main effects and interactions of several factors that are thought to affect nutrient export from developing forest ecosystems. Using a replicated 2 × 2 × 4 factorial experiment, we quantified the main effects of these factors and the factor interactions on annual calcium, magnesium, and potassium export from field mesocosms over 4 years for two Vermont locations, two soils, and four different tree seedling communities. We found that the main effects explained 56%–97% of total variation in nutrient export. Abiotic factors (location and soil) accounted for a greater percentage of the total variation in nutrient export (47%–94%) than the biotic factor (plant community) (2%–15%). However, biotic control over nutrient export was significant, even when biomass was minimal. Factor interactions were often significant, but they explained less of the variation in nutrient export (1%–33%) than the main effects. Year-to-year fluctuations influenced the relative importance of the main effects in determining nutrient export and created factor interactions between most of the explanatory variables. Our study suggests that when research is focused on typically used main effects, such as location and soil, and interactions are aggregated into overall error terms, important information about the factors controlling ecosystem processes can be lost.

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Acknowledgments

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the USDA McIntire-Stennis Program, the University of Vermont School of Natural Resources, and the American Association of University Women provided financial support for this project. We are grateful to F. H. Bormann, H. Vogelmann, M. Snyder, and D. Tobi for their valuable input during the planning stage of this project. We thank E. Leon, A. Cook, J. Trombley, C. Borer, J. Kusmin, P. MacKay, I. Martin, C. Anderson, D. Hitchcock, F. Boyle, D. Kelly, D. Walker, T. Coe, H. Heitz, and T. Smith for technical assistance. Student interns J. Arrigoni, J. Cantara, A. Shea, J. Lee, J. Keane, S. Bless, J. Hart, G. Coffeen, A. Burns, T. Vidal, B. Schneider, and M. Palmer also provided assistance. Finally, we thank A. Kulmatiski, K. A. Vogt, H. VanMiegroet, D. DeAngelis, and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful reviews and for greatly improving the quality of the manuscript.

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  1. Karen H. Beard

    Present address: Department of Forest, Range, and Wildlife Sciences and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, 84322-5230, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resources, Aiken Center, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, 05405, USA

    Karen H. Beard, Deane Wang, Carl E. Waite, Gary J. Hawley, Donald D. DeHayes & Jeffery W. Hughes

  2. Earth Systems Science and Policy, California State University, Monterey Bay, NASA-AMES Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA

    Kelly L. M. Decker

  3. Department of Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, 26506, USA

    Jonathan R. Cumming

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  1. Karen H. Beard
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Correspondence to Karen H. Beard.

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Beard, K.H., Wang, D., Waite, C.E. et al. Quantifying Ecosystem Controlsand Their Contextual Interactionson Nutrient Export fromDeveloping Forest Mesocosms. Ecosystems 8, 210–224 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0041-y

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