9316815 Lauenroth Despite the considerable effort that has been devoted to understanding net primary production and decomposition in the past 30 years, there are still a number of outstanding and crucial questions for which there are not answers. The purpose of this project is to answer several of these questions for temperate grasslands. This project will comprise experimental and observational approaches to investigate the controls on aboveground net primary projection, decomposition, and net nitrogen mineralization at two temperate grassland sites, one in the United States and the other in Argentina. Both sites have long-term records of ecological investigations. This work represents a continuation of a collaboration between the two research groups that began approximately a decade ago.
