Impact of M1A1 main battle tank disturbance on soil quality, invertebrates, and vegetation characteristics

Althoff, Peggy S.; Thien, Stephen J.

doi:10.1016/j.jterra.2004.10.014

Cited by 53 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…6 The effects of different types of tank driving on the change in the biomass index between control and track plots (all error bars represent + 1 SE) (NCDC and NOAA 2005). The importance of soil moisture conditions is also suggested by previous studies that show vehicles decrease biomass and vegetation percent cover the most in wet conditions (Payne and others 1983;Althoff and Thien 2005;Anderson and others 2006). We therefore suggest that wet soil conditions played the greatest role in increasing disturbance intensity and vegetation change in our study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…Little or no military training has occurred since 1965 in the area where we conducted our study. The soil at the experimental site consists of a Wymore-Irwin association of silt loams and silty clay loams composed of nearly level to sloping ground (Althoff and Thien 2005). The vegetation on the silt loam soil type was hayed during the summers of [2002][2003][2004], and the entire area has been burned periodically since 1965 (no records have been kept of burning).…”

Section: Study Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Vegetative cover and biomass decreased more when vehicles were driven in wet conditions than in dry conditions (Althoff and Thien 2005), and vehicles decreased vegetative cover more when turning than when they were driving straight (Watts 1998;Haugen and others 2003;Li and others 2007), especially when vehicles were driven at high speeds (Foster and others 2006) or when soils were wet (Anderson and others 2006). There is also some evidence that the response of vegetation to disturbance differed across soil types (Yorks and others 1997;Leis and others 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grassland Plant Composition Alters Vehicular Disturbance Effects in Kansas, USA

Dickson

Wilsey

Busby

et al. 2008

Environmental Management

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Many ''natural'' areas are exposed to military or recreational off-road vehicles. The interactive effects of different types of vehicular disturbance on vegetation have rarely been examined, and it has been proposed that some vegetation types are less susceptible to vehicular disturbance than others. At Fort Riley, Kansas, we experimentally tested how different plant community types changed after disturbance from an M1A1 Abrams tank driven at different speeds and turning angles during different seasons. The greatest vegetation change was observed because of driving in the spring in wet soils and the interaction of turning while driving fast (vegetation change was measured with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity). We found that less vegetation change occurred in communities with high amounts of native prairie vegetation than in communities with high amounts of introduced C3 grasses, which is the first experimental evidence we are aware of that suggests plant communities dominated by introduced C3 grasses changed more because of vehicular disturbance than communities dominated by native prairie grasses. We also found that vegetation changed linearly with vehicular disturbance intensity, suggesting that at least initially there was no catastrophic shift in vegetation beyond a certain disturbance intensity threshold. Overall, the intensity of vehicular disturbance appeared to play the greatest role in vegetation change, but the plant community type also played a strong role and this should be considered in land use planning. The reasons for greater vegetation change in introduced C3 grass dominated areas deserve further study. RightsWorks produced by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are not copyrighted within the U.S. The content of this document is not copyrighted. Abstract Many ''natural'' areas are exposed to military or recreational off-road vehicles. The interactive effects of different types of vehicular disturbance on vegetation have rarely been examined, and it has been proposed that some vegetation types are less susceptible to vehicular disturbance than others. At Fort Riley, Kansas, we experimentally tested how different plant community types changed after disturbance from an M1A1 Abrams tank driven at different speeds and turning angles during different seasons. The greatest vegetation change was observed because of driving in the spring in wet soils and the interaction of turning while driving fast (vegetation change was measured with Bray-Curtis dissimilarity). We found that less vegetation change occurred in communities with high amounts of native prairie vegetation than in communities with high amounts of introduced C 3 grasses, which is the first experimental evidence we are aware of that suggests plant communities dominated by introduced C 3 grasses changed more because of vehicular disturbance than communities dominated by native prairie grasses. We also found that vegetation changed linearly with vehicular disturbance intensity, suggesting that at least initially ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Study Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grassland Plant Composition Alters Vehicular Disturbance Effects in Kansas, USA

Dickson

Wilsey

Busby

et al. 2008

Environmental Management

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“…These studies typically assess the impact of a specific vehicle and impact regime under controlled conditions on soil and vegetation resources and evaluate the ability of the site to sustain and recover from the impact [21,[31][32][33][34]36,38,39,41,42,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][69][70][71]. The vehicle studied is typically either the most damaging vehicle used during training, most common vehicle used in off-road training activities, or a new weapon system being fielded at an installation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first paper in our series is representative of the small-scale replicated plot study design [69]. Althoff and Thien [69] use a replicated field study to assess initial impacts to vegetation and soil from a M1A2 military vehicle while soil type, soil moisture, and tracking regime were controlled variables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the impacts of military vehicle traffic on natural areas. Introduction to the special issue and review of the relevant military vehicle impact literature

Anderson

Palazzo

Ayers

et al. 2005

Journal of Terramechanics

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Relative importance of abiotic, biotic, and disturbance drivers of plant community structure in the sagebrush steppe

Mitchell

Bakker

Vincent

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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Abiotic conditions, biotic factors, and disturbances can act as filters that control community structure and composition. Understanding the relative importance of these drivers would allow us to understand and predict the causes and consequences of changes in community structure. We used long-term data (1989-2002) from the sagebrush steppe in the state of Washington, USA, to ask three questions: (1) What are the key drivers of community-level metrics of community structure? (2) Do community-level metrics and functional groups differ in magnitude or direction of response to drivers of community structure? (3) What is the relative importance of drivers of community structure? The vegetation in 2002 was expressed as seven response variables: three community-level metrics (species richness, total cover, compositional change from 1989 to 2002) and the relative abundances of four functional groups. We used a multi-model inference framework to identify a set of top models for each response metric beginning from a global model that included two abiotic drivers, six disturbances, a biotic driver (initial plant community), and interactions between the disturbance and biotic drivers. We also used a permutational relative variable importance metric to rank the influence of drivers. Moisture availability was the most important driver of species richness and of native forb cover. Fire was the most important driver of shrub cover and training area usage was important for compositional change, but disturbances, including grazing, were of secondary importance for most other variables. Biotic drivers, as represented by the initial plant communities, were the most important driver for total cover and for the relative covers of exotics and native grasses. Our results indicate that the relative importance of drivers is dependent on the choice of metric, and that drivers such as disturbance and initial plant community can interact.

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Impact of M1A1 main battle tank disturbance on soil quality, invertebrates, and vegetation characteristics

Cited by 53 publications

References 19 publications

Grassland Plant Composition Alters Vehicular Disturbance Effects in Kansas, USA

Grassland Plant Composition Alters Vehicular Disturbance Effects in Kansas, USA

Assessing the impacts of military vehicle traffic on natural areas. Introduction to the special issue and review of the relevant military vehicle impact literature

Relative importance of abiotic, biotic, and disturbance drivers of plant community structure in the sagebrush steppe

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