Table 5. Summary of the effect of livestock presence on quantifiable response variables, by livestock exclosure experiments.
| Response/Experiment | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Litter | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | ||
| Bare soil | + | + | + | + | ||||||||
| Erosion | + | + | + | + | + | + | + | |||||
| Live cover | - | - | + | + | + | |||||||
| Cardamine | -/+ | + | + | |||||||||
| Carex | ||||||||||||
| Heteropappus | + | -/+ | + | + | ||||||||
| Kobresia | + | + | ||||||||||
| Leymus | ||||||||||||
| Oxytropis | - | - | ||||||||||
| Poa | ||||||||||||
| Potentilla | + | + | ||||||||||
| Stipa | -/+ | - | -/+ | -/+ | ||||||||
| Thermopsis | + | + | -/+ |
Cell entries marked with by ‘+’ symbols represent significant increases (P < 0.025) with presence of livestock on the variable (percent cover for litter, bare soil, and live cover; index value for erosion; proportional change in annual production for plant species); negative (-) symbols represent significant declines with livestock presence, either as a categorical response or trend with time. The notation (-/+) indicates an initial negative response, followed later by a positive response. In this table, responses are to the presence of livestock, and thus directionality reverses those in statistical tests which examine effects of livestock exclusion. Table cells are blank where no significant effect was found.