Tallgrass Prairie Responses to Management Practices and Disturbances: A Review
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Title: Tallgrass prairie responses to management practices and disturbances: A review
This manuscript reviews the previous studies on tallgrass prairie management and discusses the different management and disturbances and the tallgrass prairie system’s responses to their interactive effect of disturbances and management.
Other than the minor issues, I found the paper to be interesting because this manuscript synthesizes the published literature on impact of the different management practices and disturbances on tallgrass prairie. I think this is an important piece of information which helps to develop the understanding tallgrass prairie management. I believe the paper should be accepted after mostly minor changes are made.
General recommendation:
1) In section 2.1 Fertilization, the authors have described about fertilization and explain about the impact of N on biomass production but not much about P fertilizer. Authors should extend the current discussion about impact on above ground biomass production by reviewing the literature including the following. In addition, another important literature missing is following article which decreases seasonal difference of effect of P fertilization/ mycorrhizae on tallgrass prairie grasses.
a) Hetrick, B. D., Wilson, G. W. T., & Todd, T. C. (1990). Differential responses of C3 and C4 grasses to mycorrhizal symbiosis, phosphorus fertilization, and soil microorganisms. Canadian Journal of Botany, 68(3), 461-467.
b) Hetrick, B. D., Kitt, D. G., & Wilson, G. T. (1986). The influence of phosphorus fertilization, drought, fungal species, and nonsterile soil on mycorrhizal growth response in tall grass prairie plants. Canadian Journal of Botany, 64(6), 1199-1203.
2) As compared to other subsections, “subsection 2.2.3 Soil and water availability” should be further discussed. In particularly, literature cited in the paragraph are decade-old (the recently one mentioned in this manuscript was from 1970s) and I am pretty sure there are more recent literature on this.
3) Please consider citing the recently published literatures such as:
a) Welti, E. A., & Joern, A. (2018). Fire and grazing modulate the structure and resistance of plant–floral visitor networks in a tallgrass prairie. Oecologia, 186(2), 517-528.
b) Elson, A., & Hartnett, D. C. (2017). Bison Increase the Growth and Reproduction of Forbs in Tallgrass Prairie. The American Midland Naturalist, 178(2), 245-259.
c) Manning, G. C., Baer, S. G., & Blair, J. M. (2017). Effects of grazing and fire frequency on floristic quality and its relationship to indicators of soil quality in tallgrass prairie. Environmental management, 60(6), 1062-1075.
d) O’Keefe, K., & Nippert, J. B. (2017). Grazing by bison is a stronger driver of plant ecohydrology in tallgrass prairie than fire history. Plant and soil, 411(1-2), 423-436.
4) Authors discussed about plant invasion in couple of places. I think this recently published article is useful to discuss how invasion is related with age or restoration and species richness. It also describes about how “high neighborhood-scale plant” resist to invasion in tallgrass prairie system.
Williams, E. W., Barak, R. S., Kramer, M., Hipp, A. L., & Larkin, D. J. (2018). In tallgrass prairie restorations, relatedness influences neighborhood-scale plant invasion while resource availability influences site-scale invasion. Basic and Applied Ecology.
Minor comments:
1) Make sure you are consistent with tense styling throughout the manuscript. I often must remind myself that when you describing the things in general, it should be in present tense not past. For example, Page 8, line 335-337 (However, authors did use present tense in line 90).
2) Line 329: delete “It is also important to note that”, if it is noted in the manuscript, that is already important, don’t have to mention like it is important….”
3) Line 312 “similarly”, please edit this.
Author Response
Reviewer #1:
Title: Tallgrass prairie responses to management practices and disturbances: A review
This manuscript reviews the previous studies on tallgrass prairie management and discusses the different management and disturbances and the tallgrass prairie system’s responses to their interactive effect of disturbances and management.
Other than the minor issues, I found the paper to be interesting because this manuscript synthesizes the published literature on impact of the different management practices and disturbances on tallgrass prairie. I think this is an important piece of information which helps to develop the understanding tallgrass prairie management. I believe the paper should be accepted after mostly minor changes are made.
Response: Thank you for your positive feedbacks and suggestions for the improvement of the paper. We have carefully addressed your comments in this revision.
General recommendation:
1) In section 2.1 Fertilization, the authors have described about fertilization and explain about the impact of N on biomass production but not much about P fertilizer. Authors should extend the current discussion about impact on above ground biomass production by reviewing the literature including the following. In addition, another important literature missing is following article which decreases seasonal difference of effect of P fertilization/ mycorrhizae on tallgrass prairie grasses.
a) Hetrick, B. D., Wilson, G. W. T., & Todd, T. C. (1990). Differential responses of C3 and C4 grasses to mycorrhizal symbiosis, phosphorus fertilization, and soil microorganisms. Canadian Journal of Botany, 68(3), 461-467.
b) Hetrick, B. D., Kitt, D. G., & Wilson, G. T. (1986). The influence of phosphorus fertilization, drought, fungal species, and nonsterile soil on mycorrhizal growth response in tall grass prairie plants. Canadian Journal of Botany, 64(6), 1199-1203.
Response: Thank you for pointing out few literatures to include in our review. We have added them in this revision.
2) As compared to other subsections, “subsection 2.2.3 Soil and water availability” should be further discussed. In particularly, literature cited in the paragraph are decade-old (the recently one mentioned in this manuscript was from 1970s) and I am pretty sure there are more recent literature on this.
Response: We have expanded this subsection and added new literatures.
3) Please consider citing the recently published literatures such as:
a) Welti, E. A., & Joern, A. (2018). Fire and grazing modulate the structure and resistance of plant–floral visitor networks in a tallgrass prairie. Oecologia, 186(2), 517-528.
b) Elson, A., & Hartnett, D. C. (2017). Bison Increase the Growth and Reproduction of Forbs in Tallgrass Prairie. The American Midland Naturalist, 178(2), 245-259.
c) Manning, G. C., Baer, S. G., & Blair, J. M. (2017). Effects of grazing and fire frequency on floristic quality and its relationship to indicators of soil quality in tallgrass prairie. Environmental management, 60(6), 1062-1075.
d) O’Keefe, K., & Nippert, J. B. (2017). Grazing by bison is a stronger driver of plant ecohydrology in tallgrass prairie than fire history. Plant and soil, 411(1-2), 423-436.
Response: Thank you so much for pointing out these literatures to include in our review. We have added them in this revision.
4) Authors discussed about plant invasion in couple of places. I think this recently published article is useful to discuss how invasion is related with age or restoration and species richness. It also describes about how “high neighborhood-scale plant” resist to invasion in tallgrass prairie system.
Williams, E. W., Barak, R. S., Kramer, M., Hipp, A. L., & Larkin, D. J. (2018). In tallgrass prairie restorations, relatedness influences neighborhood-scale plant invasion while resource availability influences site-scale invasion. Basic and Applied Ecology.
Response: Thank you for providing more literature to include in the review.
Minor comments:
1) Make sure you are consistent with tense styling throughout the manuscript. I often must remind myself that when you describing the things in general, it should be in present tense not past. For example, Page 8, line 335-337 (However, authors did use present tense in line 90).
Response: Thank you for pointing out inconsistencies. We agree with the comment that describing things in general should be in present tense. We have carefully revised the manuscript for consistencies.
2) Line 329: delete “It is also important to note that”, if it is noted in the manuscript, that is already important, don’t have to mention like it is important….”
Response: Deleted.
3) Line 312 “similarly”, please edit this.
Response: Corrected.
Reviewer 2 Report
"The major goal of this article is to review the impacts of different common management practices and disturbances and tallgrass prairie restoration on plant species composition, plant growth and development, water and nutrient cycles, and microbial activities in tallgrass prairie systems. This article provides better insights into developing and adopting sustainable management practices and better predicting forage quality and quantity for tallgrass prairie systems."
This paper does compile a lot of information about how multiple aspects of tallgrass prairie respond to a variety of treatments applied in experimental settings, with some of those actually being common management practices. I question whether nitrogen fertilization is a common management practice in rangeland systems, rather than in bioenergy production systems.
However, the paper does not do a very good job of providing insights regarding this compilation of literature. There is little evaluation of the quality of the studies cited or the context in which they were performed, and more importantly, there is little synthesis of information. The Results section reads largely like a stream of sentences copied from someone’s notes taken while reading each paper. There is little effort to transition from one study to the next (and therefore make connections), or even to make clear which study a sentence is referring to. Two blatant examples of the latter are in lines 290 and 298, where the authors refer to “they” but don’t make it clear who “they” is. Even in the Discussion section, most of the text is repetition of results from above or recitation of results not yet presented. Attempts at synthesis in this section do not always make sense. For example, the final sentence of the first paragraph in section 4.1 (lines 314-315) contradicts basically all of section 2.1.1.
In my line-specific comments below, I provide more examples of similar problems. To be a useful contribution, I suggest that the authors restructure the manuscript to more clearly evaluate and synthesize the information around the final sentence of their abstract: Which practices are sustainable for producing sufficient quantities of forage with the desired quality? Where is the information sufficient for reasonably predicting forage quality and quantity, and where are the largest knowledge gaps?
LINE-SPECIFIC COMMENTS:
30. The Introduction comes across as a scattershot of examples and not a coherent explanation as to why this review is necessary or unique.
35-36. What do you mean by tallgrass prairies being managed less efficiently than croplands?
85-88. The study cited here is probably not appropriate for this review, as it is not from tallgrass prairie but mixed-grass prairie, a much more water-limited system than tallgrass prairie.
179-184. It should be noted that these results are from a simulation, not from a field study. Or at least that’s what the title of the study cited implies.
219-220. This sentence is missing something in the first part, perhaps something about forest.
224-227. This sentence contradicts itself.
262-265. Another study from a system outside of tallgrass prairie.
278-285. What does the second sentence in this paragraph have to do with prairie restorations improving soil quality? In fact, most of this paragraph does little to support its topic (first) sentence.
286: Which remnant and restoration?
290, 298. Who is “they”?
300-301: What do intensive and extensive mean in this context?
317-118: Which of these has higher forage quality? How does the change in species composition's effect on forage quality compare to the effect of there being more N available in the soil (and probably therefore taken up by plants)?
321-323: This depends on the goal, doesn't it? If all you want is forage and a community reacts to fertilization as a whole, what difference does it make how each species reacts? If you want to plant individual species for maximum biomass production (as for bioenergy), then individual species reactions (in monocultures) makes sense.
336-337: What do you mean by reduced nutrient balance?
351-359: This seems more appropriate for the results section.
378-381: This seems like at least as a robust explanation for the positive response of diversity to early N fertilization in reference 10 than does the timing of N addition.
381-383: I don't understand how the latter part of the sentence supports the former in a restoration context -- are there more mycorrhizae in restorations than in native prairies?
395-407: Weak conclusion.
Author Response
Reviewer #2:
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
"The major goal of this article is to review the impacts of different common management practices and disturbances and tallgrass prairie restoration on plant species composition, plant growth and development, water and nutrient cycles, and microbial activities in tallgrass prairie systems. This article provides better insights into developing and adopting sustainable management practices and better predicting forage quality and quantity for tallgrass prairie systems."
This paper does compile a lot of information about how multiple aspects of tallgrass prairie respond to a variety of treatments applied in experimental settings, with some of those actually being common management practices. I question whether nitrogen fertilization is a common management practice in rangeland systems, rather than in bioenergy production systems.
Response: Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments for the improvement of the paper. We have carefully addressed your comments. Tallgrass prairie grasslands can range from unmanaged low productive systems to highly managed high productive systems. N fertilization is a widely used management practice to improve the productivity of managed prairie grasslands for grazing or hay harvests. Thus, several papers have evaluated N fertilization and forage production in tallgrass prairies. However, addition or removal of N fertilizer in prairie grasslands is minimal.
However, the paper does not do a very good job of providing insights regarding this compilation of literature. There is little evaluation of the quality of the studies cited or the context in which they were performed, and more importantly, there is little synthesis of information. The Results section reads largely like a stream of sentences copied from someone’s notes taken while reading each paper. There is little effort to transition from one study to the next (and therefore make connections), or even to make clear which study a sentence is referring to. Two blatant examples of the latter are in lines 290 and 298, where the authors refer to “they” but don’t make it clear who “they” is. Even in the Discussion section, most of the text is repetition of results from above or recitation of results not yet presented. Attempts at synthesis in this section do not always make sense. For example, the final sentence of the first paragraph in section 4.1 (lines 314-315) contradicts basically all of section 2.1.1.
Response: We have added lots of new literature and substantially revised the paper. We have carefully checked each statement in Results and Discussion to avoid repetitions, and tried to make smooth transition from study to study. We also checked statements for consistency. The statement you are referring “infrequent burning of unfertilized prairie can result in higher forage production” does not basically contradicts with section 2.1.1. Section 2.1.1 is basically saying that N fertilizers can increase biomass, but the increment is higher in N limited sites (e.g., N limited frequent burnt sites). The last sentence of the first paragraph of section 4.1 “infrequent burning of unfertilized prairie can result in higher forage production” also supports the same – infrequent burnt sites are less N limited as compared to frequently burnt, and if the sites are not fertilized then better to adopt infrequent burning to avoid more N limitations to maintain higher forage production. However, to avoid such confusion, we revised the statement as “unfertilized prairies should not be burnt frequently (N limiting) to maintain higher forage production.”
In my line-specific comments below, I provide more examples of similar problems. To be a useful contribution, I suggest that the authors restructure the manuscript to more clearly evaluate and synthesize the information around the final sentence of their abstract: Which practices are sustainable for producing sufficient quantities of forage with the desired quality? Where is the information sufficient for reasonably predicting forage quality and quantity, and where are the largest knowledge gaps?
Response: Thank you for your thoughtful comments. We have carefully revised and made substantial changes in this revision based on your suggestions. We have carefully addressed all of your comments. Please see below our response for each question.
LINE-SPECIFIC COMMENTS:
30. The Introduction comes across as a scattershot of examples and not a coherent explanation as to why this review is necessary or unique.
Response: We have revised it. Please look at the revised version.
35-36. What do you mean by tallgrass prairies being managed less efficiently than croplands?
Response: We replaced ‘efficiently’ by ‘effectively’. Farmers manage croplands better than grasslands.
85-88. The study cited here is probably not appropriate for this review, as it is not from tallgrass prairie but mixed-grass prairie, a much more water-limited system than tallgrass prairie.
Response: It was provided as an example to show that prairie grasslands can behave differently to fertilization during wet and dry years.
179-184. It should be noted that these results are from a simulation, not from a field study. Or at least that’s what the title of the study cited implies.
Response: They were combination of field, laboratory, and modeling studies.
219-220. This sentence is missing something in the first part, perhaps something about forest.
Response: We corrected the sentence.
224-227. This sentence contradicts itself.
Response: No, they do not contradict for grasslands since microbial biomass is not much influenced by fire in grasslands.
262-265. Another study from a system outside of tallgrass prairie.
Response: We removed it.
278-285. What does the second sentence in this paragraph have to do with prairie restorations improving soil quality? In fact, most of this paragraph does little to support its topic (first) sentence.
Response: No, it does support for improving soil quality by restorations. For example, second sentence says - Application of 100 kg N ha-1 yr-1 increased above ground biomass by more than 50% in 1-3 year old restored prairies and approximately by 40% after three years – which means above ground biomass increased more by applying fertilizer in early phase of restoration than later phase due to improvement in soil quality over time. Please see the last sentence of this sub-section 3.2 – “restoration prairie sites had intermediate soil quality indicators and microbial community structures compared with the virgin prairie and the agricultural sites.”
286: Which remnant and restoration?
Response: They were compared in McKinley et al., 2005.
290, 298. Who is “they”?
Response: We were referring to cited authors in the previous sentence. When we wrote paper at the beginning, we had not used number citation – for example, it was cited as (McKinley et al., 2005) instead of [78]. We modified them (throughout the paper) to avoid confusion.
300-301: What do intensive and extensive mean in this context?
Response: The intensive plots were in research stations and extensive plots were in working farms or reserves. We have revised now.
317-118: Which of these has higher forage quality? How does the change in species composition's effect on forage quality compare to the effect of there being more N available in the soil (and probably therefore taken up by plants)?
Response: In general, most forbs are of lower quality (few with good quality) and even some of them are not edible for cattle. C3 grasses are low in protein and will have very short window for good quality forage. Thus, C4 grasses will have higher forage quality. Change in species composition thus affects forage quality.
321-323: This depends on the goal, doesn't it? If all you want is forage and a community reacts to fertilization as a whole, what difference does it make how each species reacts? If you want to plant individual species for maximum biomass production (as for bioenergy), then individual species reactions (in monocultures) makes sense.
Response: Yes, it depends on the goal. However, species composition in native prairies is dynamic due to several factors. Understanding the response of individual species will help better manage prairie grasslands (to promote or suppress certain species) depending on the goals.
336-337: What do you mean by reduced nutrient balance?
Response: Carbon and nutrient balance of grasslands are decreased by removing dead aboveground biomass in fires, resulting in low C and N inputs into the soil.
351-359: This seems more appropriate for the results section.
Response: In results, we focused on one factor at a time. Those were presented here as an examples of interaction effects. We have carefully revised the manuscript and made substantial changes throughout the paper.
378-381: This seems like at least as a robust explanation for the positive response of diversity to early N fertilization in reference 10 than does the timing of N addition.
Response: We have added this statement also as an explanation of the positive response of diversity to N fertilization.
381-383: I don't understand how the latter part of the sentence supports the former in a restoration context -- are there more mycorrhizae in restorations than in native prairies?
Response: Mycorrhizae enhanced biomass of C4 grasses but not of C3 grasses or annuals. Another study added in the revision (cited below) also showed that arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) inoculum promoted establishment of prairie species in restored tallgrass prairies. These results indicate that the addition of mycorrhizae accelerates the succession process in restored prairies.
M. R. Smith, I. Charvat, and R. L. Jacobson, Arbuscular mycorrhizae promote establishment of prairie species in a tallgrass prairie restoration, Canadian Journal of Botany 76(11) (1998) 1947-1954.
395-407: Weak conclusion.
Response: We have substantially revised it. Please see the revision.
