Land-use legacies, the enduring effects on biotic and abiotic aspects of the ecosystem from past human endeavors on the landscape, have become a recognized influence on the present composition and function. Old fields where prior cultivation has been abandoned are particularly well studied across a variety of biomes worldwide. Soil physical and chemical properties, vegetation composition and cover, and hydrologic cycling are often altered for decades to centuries on old fields. In most cases, these old fields revert naturally or are transformed to pastoral systems with important economic implications to the communities and regions surrounding them. Although there is agreement that land-use legacies have the potential to further order these lands, very little has been done to investigate these interactions, particularly in pastoral systems. I use a case study approach from research completed in the Great Basin Desert Region of the United States to examine how land-use legacies may compound climate change impacts in the sagebrush-grassland ecosystem. Plant community composition and soil physical and chemical data were collected from old fields, adjacent native shrubland, and from rehabilitation seedings for pastoral use.
Results/Conclusions
My results show that cultivation legacies remain in the vegetation and soils nearly 100 years after crop production was abandoned. Using the data from these studies, I will provide specific examples of how land-use legacies affect current pastoral activities and the ways in which these impacts may interact with climate change in the future. This case study demonstrates the need to rethink our strategies for managing climate change impacts on pastoral systems. Further, it reinforces the growing calls in ecological literature for research into how land-use legacies may respond under global environmental change and highlights specific ways these questions can be addressed.