No worries, mate. He’s got yer back.

IMPORTANT: Konza LTER invested professional careers building and curating these datasets. The NSF LTER program, like all big science projects linked to global change, is in political peril. Let your reps know that turning out the lights on these investments will leave us all in darkness.

As grassland plant communities are re-organized due to climate change, grass feeders will find more, but less nutritious food. Already we see grasshoppers declining and taking longer to reach reproductive age on Konza. Meanwhile, forb feeders will have to hunt harder to find less of their food.

Woody plants, like this Cornus, were less well sampled over time, and show less change in nutrient density.
Even as impenetrable thickets spring up on Konza when and where fires are less common.

The middle column reveals how nutrient-rich forbs show less Nutrient Dilution with competition but a surprising increase in half the elements as CO2 rises.
We suggest forbs use +CO2 to fuel nutrient harvest as the doubling of grass biomass increases shading and demand for effective photosynthesis.

We used a heat map to capture the shifts:
blue=declines of an element in plant tissue
green=increases in element density.
First column shows grass nutrients declining in plots with more grass and forb biomass.
The dominant food on Konza is getting more abundant and poorer to eat.
Nutrient Dilution.

Over 3 decades, grass biomass has been steadily increasing with Year/CO2, particularly when fire is frequent. Over the same period, flowering plants (forbs, most of Konza’s plant biodiversity) are declining, even as woody plants like dogwood accelerate encroachment where burns are infrequent.

We start with hypotheses for drivers of Konza’s grass, forb, and woody plant biomass, and its effect on the nutritional density of 17 of life’s essential chemical building blocks. But we discovered much more.

A new and indirect method finds no pattern. #caution

They measure bugs that have dispersed into the upper atmosphere. This is *activity density*, quite a few steps from abundance.

Consider (one) scenario: abundance has declined but warmer temps promote flight activity. One cancels out the other.

A new and indirect method finds no pattern. #caution

They measure bugs that have dispersed into the upper atmosphere. This is *activity density*, quite a few steps from abundance.

Consider (one) scenario: abundance has declined but warmer temps promote flight activity. One cancels out the other.