Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Determination of Peak Standing Crop Biomass of Herbaceous Shoots by the Harvest Method

1968; University of Notre Dame; Volume: 79; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2423188

1938-4238

Charles R. Malone,

Rangeland and Wildlife Management

The peak standing crop biomass of herbaceous shoots, a measure of net primary shoot production, was determined in three first-year old fields by two methods: (1) sampling the peak community standing crop at one moment and (2) summing the peaks of the individual species over the entire growing season. The methods gave similar estimates of peak standing crop in the two old fields where the major producers reached peaks at comparable times. In the third old field, a large discrepancy existed between the two estimates as a result of the diverse times at which the major producers reached peak standing crops. It was valid to use an estimate of net primary shoot production based on the community peak standing crop only when the dominant species had similar phenologies. Whenever this occurred, such an estimate had a smaller statistical error associated with its mean than an estimate derived from the sum of individual species peaks.