Digital Commons Network^™

Horticultural Availability And Homeowner Preferences Drive Plant Diversity And Composition In Urban Yards, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Josep Padullés Cubino, William D. Pearse, Sarah E. Hobbie, A. J. Lange, Sonja Knapp, Kristen C. Nelson

Ecology Center Publications

Understanding the factors that influence biodiversity in urban areas is important for informing management efforts aimed at enhancing the ecosystem services in urban settings and curbing the spread of invasive introduced species. We determined the ecological and socioeconomic factors that influence patterns of plant richness, phylogenetic diversity, and composition in 133 private household yards in the Minneapolis‐Saint Paul Metropolitan area, Minnesota, USA. We compared the composition of spontaneously occurring plant species and those planted by homeowners with composition in natural areas (at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve) and in the horticulture pool of species available from commercial growers. Yard …

Seedling Emergence Patterns Of Six Restoration Species In Soils From Two Big Sagebrush Plant Communities, Lacey E. Wilder, Kari E. Veblen, Eugene W. Schupp, Thomas A. Monaco

Ecology Center Publications

Despite the critical need to improve degraded herbaceous understory conditions in many semiarid ecosystems, the influence of soil properties on seedling emergence of species seeded in shrubland plant communities is largely unexplored. We evaluated emergence patterns of 6 restoration species in soils from wyomingensis (i.e., Wyoming big sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) and vaseyana (i.e., mountain big sagebrush, A. t. ssp. vaseyana [Rydb.] Beetle) plant communities that differed in soil texture, soil organic matter content, and soil water-holding capacity. We conducted 2 separate experiments that regularly wetted soils to standardized soil water potentials (i.e., …

Contrasting Development Of Canopy Structure And Primary Production In Planted And Naturally Regenerated Red Pine Forests, Laura J. Hickey, Jeff Atkins, Robert T. Fahey, Mark R. Kreider, Shea B. Wales, Christopher M. Gough

Ecology Center Publications

Globally, planted forests are rapidly replacing naturally regenerated stands but the implications for canopy structure, carbon (C) storage, and the linkages between the two are unclear. We investigated the successional dynamics, interlinkages and mechanistic relationships between wood net primary production (NPP_w) and canopy structure in planted and naturally regenerated red pine (Pinus resinosa Sol. ex Aiton) stands spanning ≥ 45 years of development. We focused our canopy structural analysis on leaf area index (LAI) and a spatially integrative, terrestrial LiDAR-based complexity measure, canopy rugosity, which is positively correlated with NPP_w in several naturally regenerated forests, but …

Resilience And Resistance In Sagebrush Ecosystems Are Associated With Seasonal Soil Temperature And Water Availability, Bruce A. Roundy, Jeanne C. Chambers, David A. Pyke, Richard F. Miller, Robin J. Tausch, Eugene W. Schupp, Ben Rau, Trevor Gruell

Ecology Center Publications

Invasion and dominance of exotic grasses and increased fire frequency threaten native ecosystems worldwide. In the Great Basin region of the western United States, woody and herbaceous fuel treatments are implemented to decrease the effects of wildfire and increase sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to exotic annual grasses. High cover of the exotic annual cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) after treatments increases fine fuels, which in turn increases the risk of passing over a biotic threshold to a state of increased wildfire frequency and conversion to cheatgrass dominance. Sagebrush ecosystem resilience to wildfire and resistance …

The Importance Of Marine Predators In The Provisioning Of Ecosystem Services By Coastal Plant Communities, Trisha B. Atwood, Edd Hammill

Ecology Center Publications

Food web theory predicts that current global declines in marine predators could generate unwanted consequences for many marine ecosystems. In coastal plant communities (kelp, seagrass, mangroves, and salt marsh), several studies have documented the far-reaching effects of changing predator populations. Across coastal ecosystems, the loss of marine predators appears to negatively affect coastal plant communities and the ecosystem services they provide. Here, we discuss some of the documented and suspected effects of predators on coastal protection, carbon sequestration, and the stability and resilience of coastal plant communities. In addition, we present a meta-analysis to assess the strength and direction of …

High Dispersal Ability Is Related To Fast Life-History Strategies, Noelle G. Beckman, James M. Bullock, Roberto Salguero-Gomez

Ecology Center Publications

1. Seed dispersal is an essential, yet often overlooked process in plant ecology and evolution, affecting adaptation capacity, population persistence and invasiveness. A species’ ability to disperse is expected to covary with other life-history traits to form dispersal syndromes. Dispersal might be linked to the rate of life history, fecundity or generation time, depending on the relative selection pressures of bethedging, kin competition or maintaining gene flow. However, the linkage between dispersal and plant life-history strategies remains unknown because it is difficult to observe, quantify and manipulate the influence of dispersal over large spatiotemporal scales.

2. We integrate datasets describing …

Limited Alpine Climatic Warming And Modeled Phenology Advancement For Three Alpine Species In The Northeast United States, Michael L. Davis, Kenneth D. Kimball, Douglas M. Weihrauch, Georgia L. D. Murray, Kenneth Rancourt

Ecology Center Publications

• Premise of the study: Most alpine plants in the Northeast United States are perennial and flower early in the growing season, extending their limitedgrowing season. Concurrently, they risk the loss of reproductive efforts to late frosts. Quantifying long-term trends in northeastern alpine flower phenology and late-spring/early-summer frost risk is limited by a dearth of phenology and climate data, except for Mount Washington, New Hampshire (1916 m a.s.l.).
• Methods: Logistic phenology models for three northeastern US alpinespecies (Diapensia lapponica, Carex bigelowii and Vaccinium vitis-idaea) were developed from 4 yr (2008–2011) of phenology and air temperature measurements from 12 …