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Deep-Water Antipatharians: Proxies Of Environmental Change, B. Williams, M.J. Risk, S.W. Ross, K.J. Sulak Sep 2006

Deep-Water Antipatharians: Proxies Of Environmental Change, B. Williams, M.J. Risk, S.W. Ross, K.J. Sulak

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Deep-water (307–697 m) antipatharian (black coral) specimens were collected from the southeastern continental slope of the United States and the north-central Gulf of Mexico. The sclerochronology of the specimens indicates that skeletal growth takes place by formation of concentric coeval layers. We used 210Pb to estimate radial growth rate of two specimens, and to establish that they were several centuries old. Bands were delaminated in KOH and analyzed for carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes. Carbon values ranged from _16.4‰ to _15.7‰; the oldest specimen displayed the largest range in values. Nitrogen values ranged from 7.7‰ to 8.6‰. …


Coupling Between Primary Terrestrial Succession And The Trophic Development Of Lakes At Glacier Bay, Alaska, D. R. Engstrom, Sherilyn C. Fritz Jan 2006

Coupling Between Primary Terrestrial Succession And The Trophic Development Of Lakes At Glacier Bay, Alaska, D. R. Engstrom, Sherilyn C. Fritz

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The natural eutrophication of lakes is still an accepted concept in limnology, arising as it does from the earliest efforts to classify lakes and place them in an evolutionary sequence. Recent studies of newly formed lakes at Glacier Bay, Alaska, only partially support this idea, and suggest more variable trends in lake trophic development which are under local (catchment-level) control. Here we use sediment cores from several lakes in Glacier Bay National Park to examine the relationship between successional changes in catchment vegetation and trends in water-column nitrogen (a limiting nutrient) and lake primary production. Terrestrial succession at Glacier Bay …


Fire Does Not Alter Vegetation In Infertile Prairie, Johannes M.H. Knops Jan 2006

Fire Does Not Alter Vegetation In Infertile Prairie, Johannes M.H. Knops

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The paradigm in prairie ecology is that fire is one of the key factors deter-mining vegetation composition. fire can impact grassland ecosystems in various ways, including changing plant species composition and inducing nitro-gen loss. I found that 17 years of different burning frequencies in infertile grassland had only a minor impact on the vegetation composition and diversity. The only major impact from increasing the frequency of fires was a decrease of Poa pratensis abundance. However, other plant species did not r-spond to the change in Poa abundance. This result contrasts with previous studies in savannas and more productive grasslands, where …