Simon C. Power

• PhD Botany
• PostDoc Position at The Ohio State University

Many ecosystems are experiencing increased fire frequencies and species invasions that can erode their resilience and cause a shift to alternative states. In the sagebrush‐steppe, a semi‐arid shrubland ecosystem in North America, restoration treatments are often implemented following wildfire to enhance their resilience to invasion. However, little...

Peatland ecosystems are of global conservation and environmental importance storing globally significant amounts of ancient carbon, regulating regional temperatures and hydrological regimes, and supporting unique biodiversity. Livestock grazing, land-use change, drainage, nutrient and acid deposition, and wildfire threaten the composition and funct...

Oak and hickory (Quercus spp. and Carya spp.) recruitment in forests of eastern North America is adversely impacted by woody invasive species. Conservation grazing, the use of livestock for restoration or biodiversity promotion, has been used to control invasive plants. The efficacy of such grazing and its ecological tradeoffs in oak-hickory forest...

Background Unveiling the diversity of plant strategies to acquire and use phosphorus (P) is crucial to understand factors promoting their coexistence in hyperdiverse P-impoverished communities within fire-prone landscapes such as in cerrado (South America), fynbos (South Africa) and kwongan (Australia). Scope We explore the diversity of P-acquisit...

Oak-hickory (Quercus spp. and Carya spp.) recruitment and regeneration are negatively impacted by non-natives species. Goats can provide an initial control of non-native vegetation; however, browsing behavior and preference should be studied before their introduction in the forest. Our objective was to analyze goats’ browsing behavior and preferenc...

Fire is commonly identified as strong driver of alternative stable states such as adjacent open‐ versus closed‐canopy vegetation types. The absence of open‐canopy species from closed‐canopy understoreys, where light availability is low and dynamic, however, suggests shade tolerance is an integral determinant of such vegetation boundaries. While the...

Non‐forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change t...

Non-forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, yet are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely-sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in-situ monitoring. Current global change t...

Phenotypic plasticity facilitates species persistence across resource gradients but may be limited in low‐resource environments requiring resource conservation. We investigated the tradeoff between trait plasticity and resource conservatism across a biome boundary characterized by high turnover in nutrient and light availability, and whether this c...

The idea of alternate stable states (ASS) has been used to explain the juxtaposition of distinct vegetation types within the same climate regime. ASS may explain the co‐existence of relatively inflammable closed‐canopy Afrotemperate Forest patches (“Forest”) within fire‐prone open‐canopy Fynbos in the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) on sandstone‐derive...

Open- (e.g. grassland, savanna, shrubland) and closed-canopy (e.g. forest) biomes frequently coexist in the same landscape, where open environments tend to be fire-prone with higher light, but lower nutrient and water availability than closed environments. Environmental heterogeneity could select for divergent floristic assemblages and adaptive tra...

Aim Biomes are defined according to the growth forms of their dominant species but also contrast in floristic composition. Biome boundaries thus represent areas of taxonomic turnover. The degree of turnover is dependent on the difference in environmental conditions between biomes and the ability of lineages to evolve adaptive traits. Open‐ and clos...

Open- and closed-canopy biomes such as forest and savanna tend to form sharp boundaries between each other. Concomitant to this boundary is a change in floristic composition. This poster aims to explore the floristic turnover across multiple boundaries that vary structurally and to determine how this turnover relates to changes in disturbance and r...

The species richness of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR) reflects a complex evolutionary history as well as extreme habitat heterogeneity. Here we argue that two main components of habitat heterogeneity are, 1) the variability across the CFR in the prevalence of hot, dry summers and wet winters, and 2) edaphic diversity due the complex geological de...

In fire-prone ecosystems, plants for the most part persist via either soil-stored seed banks (seeders) or below-ground storage structures (resprouters). Given their greater allocation of resources above ground to growth and reproduction, seeders are likely to have a higher nutrient requirement than resprouters. This may result in discernable differ...

Legumes are unable to persist through post-fire succession in fynbos of the CFR, unlike species in Proteaceae and Restionaceae. In the oligotrophic soils of the CFR, N2-fixing legumes are probably P limited. Over 75% of legumes are seeders, which tend to be shorter-lived than co-occurring resprouters. Seeders are likely to have a higher nutrient re...

Legumes are unable to persist through post-fire succession in fynbos vegetation of the CFR, unlike species in families such as Proteaceae and Restionaceae. The majority of fynbos legumes are seeders (> 75%), which tend to be shorter-lived than co-occurring resprouters. Seeders are likely to have a higher nutrient requirement than resprouters, given...

Abundance of Fabaceae declines in representation through post-fire-succession in fynbos vegetation of the Cape Floristic Region (CFR). This reduction in legume occurrence coincides with a known decline in post-fire soil P availability. It was hypothesized that the disappearance of legume species during post-fire succession is due to an inability to...