Mixed-Grass Prairie Plant Traits and Composition Under Drought and Grazing

A five-year experimental study from 2019-2023 measured plant community composition and functional traits under controlled drought and grazing treatments. Data were collected at sites in Montana and Wyoming using a randomized block design with five rainfall reduction levels and three cattle grazing regimes. The dataset was published by researchers affiliated with the Department of Agriculture under a CC0-1.0 license.

Use Cases

• Modeling plant community response to drought based on controlled rainfall reduction treatments.
• Analyzing the interaction between grazing intensity and drought recovery based on forage utilization data.
• Studying plant functional trait variation under ambient conditions for species found at the study sites.
• Evaluating the effectiveness of different livestock drought management strategies (destock, stable, heavy) on prairie composition.

Strengths

• Experimental design includes five drought treatment levels (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 99% rainfall reduction) and three distinct grazing regimes.
• Data collection spans five years (2019-2023), covering two years of drought treatment and three years of recovery.
• Measurements include both foliar plant community composition via pin-drop method and functional traits for dominant species.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to the two study sites in Montana and Wyoming.

Provenance

Source

Department of Agriculture

Collection Method

Data collected via a randomized complete block field experiment using rain-out shelters and controlled cattle grazing.

Time Range

2019-2023

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 22:47:57.642469; freshness should be verified.

Geography

One site in Montana and one site in Wyoming, United States.