Plant Community Composition of Douglas Creek Training Area, North Dakota Army National Guard: 1999-2015

Abstract

A vegetation monitoring study was conducted from 1999 to 2015 at Douglas Creek Military Reservation (DCMR), Garrison in McLean County, North Dakota to assess how climatic and military training disturbance affects plant community composition. The objectives were to 1) describe the prairie vegetation at DCMR across four plant communities for sixteen years and 2) explore shifts in plant community composition in correlation with time. Sixteen transects were randomly selected on native prairie and classified into four types based on plant communities. Frequency data was collected at each of these sites four times from 1999-2015, with plant communities compared using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) ordination. The NMS ordination showed that the frequency of invasive graminoids Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) and smooth brome (Bromus inermis Leyss.) increased during the study. Increases in precipitation and growing season days appear to be the primary influence on the changes in plant communities from 1999-2015.