We use an extensive field survey and integrated inventory to sample the CAP LTER study area consisting of the urbanized, suburbanized and agricultural areas of metropolitan Phoenix and the surrounding desert.
The inventory is conducted every five years at 204 sample plots (30m x 30m) located randomly using a tessellation-stratified dual-density sampling design (Information on land use — by site or by land use.) Objectives are a) to characterize patches in terms of key biotic, physical, and chemical variables and b) to examine relationships between land use, general plant diversity, native plant diversity, plant biovolume, soil nutrient status, and socioeconomic indices along an indirect urban gradient.
The following parameters are collected (Protocols):
- Plants identified to species
- Plant-size measurements for biovolume calculations
- Georeferenced mapping of built and vegetation structures
- Soil coring for physicochemical and metal analyses, microbial communities, and black carbon (bC) analyses
- Insect sweep-net sampling
Example of datasheets.
Survey 200 Publications
Dugan, L. E., M. F. Wojciechowski, and . L. R. Landrum. 2007. A large scale plant survey: Efficient vouchering with identification through morphology and DNA analysis. TAXON 56(4):1238-1244. abstract
Hope, D., C. Gries, D. Casagrande, C. L. Redman, N. B. Grimm, and C. Martin. 2006. Drivers of spatial variation in plant diversity across the central Arizona-Phoenix ecosystem. Society and Natural Resources 19(2):101-116. abstract
Hope, D., C. Gries, W. Zhu, W. F. Fagan, C. L. Redman, N. B. Grimm, A. L. Nelson, C. Martin, and A. Kinzig. 2003. Socioeconomics drive urban plant diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 100(15):8788-8792. abstract
Hope, D., W. Zhu, C. Gries, J. Oleson, J. Kaye, N. B. Grimm, and B. Baker. 2005. Spatial variation in soil inorganic nitrogen across an arid urban ecosystem. Urban Ecosystems 8:251-273. abstract
Kaye, J. P., A. Majumdar, C. Gries, A. Buyantuyev, N. B. Grimm, D. Hope, G. D. Jenerette, W. Zhu, and L. Baker. 2008. Hierarchical Bayesian scaling of soil properties across urban, agricultural, and desert ecosystems. Ecological Applications 18:132-145. (pdf)
Lewis, D. B., J. P. Kaye, C. Gries, A. P. Kinzig, and C. L. Redman. 2006. Agrarian legacy in soil nutrient pools of urbanizing arid lands. Global Change Biology 12:1-7. abstract
Majumdar, A. and C. Gries. 2010. Bivariate zero-inflated regression for count data: A Bayesian model with application to plant counts. International Journal of Biostatistics 6:Art. 27. abstract
Majumdar, A., C. Gries and J. Walker. 2011. A non-stationary spatial generalized linear mixed model approach for studying plant diversity. Journal of Applied Statistics 38:1935-1950. abstract
Majumdar, A., J. P. Kaye, C. Gries, D. Hope, and N. B. Grimm. 2008. Hierarchical spatial modeling and prediction of multiple soil nutrients and carbon concentrations. Communications in Statistics – Simulation and Computation 37(2):434-453. abstract
Oleson, J., D. Hope, C. Gries, and J. Kaye. 2006. Estimating soil properties in heterogeneous land-use patches: A Bayesian approach. Environmetrics 17:517-525. abstract
Stuart, G., C. Gries, and D. Hope. 2006. The relationship between pollen and extant vegetation across an arid urban ecosystem and surrounding desert in the southwest USA. Journal of Biogeography 33:573-591. abstract
Walker, J. S., N. B. Grimm, J. M. Briggs, C. Gries, and L. Dugan. 2009. Effects of urbanization on plant species diversity in central Arizona. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(9): 465-470. (pdf)
Zhu, W., D. Hope, C. Gries, and N. B. Grimm. 2006. Soil characteristics and the accumulation of inorganic nitrogen in an arid urban ecosystem. Ecosystems 9:711-724. abstract