Form Submission: Participation Entry

Estimating plant biomass is essential to understanding carbon cycling, land-use impacts on natural resources, and ecological functioning or structure. However, biomass estimation has been relatively understudied for the sagebrush steppe of the U.S., one of the country’s most extensive ecosystems. Direct biomass measurements require destructive harvesting of plants which is costly and ecologically disruptive at large scales. As a nondestructive alternative, I am developing allometric equations to estimate the aboveground biomass of the dominant shrub species (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis) in Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities. I am utilizing regression analysis with biomass measurements as the response variable and nondestructive measurements of shrub height, stem diameter, and canopy diameter as predictor variables. I collected these measurements from a total of 126 shrubs across 20 sites in southwestern Wyoming during July 2017. My study will provide a valuable method for assessing plant biomass and carbon across the big sagebrush steppe region.