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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Evaluation Of Methods For The Restoration Of Native Grasslands On Abandoned Center Pivots In The Sandsage Prairies Of Southwestern Kansas, Alonso Barragan-Martinez
Evaluation Of Methods For The Restoration Of Native Grasslands On Abandoned Center Pivots In The Sandsage Prairies Of Southwestern Kansas, Alonso Barragan-Martinez
Master's Theses
Throughout southwestern Kansas thousands of acres of native grassland have been converted to cropland for agricultural use, reducing native prairie by over 60% in the sandsage prairie. Due to low precipitation and arid conditions, much of these croplands are irrigated by center pivot irrigation systems fed by the Ogallala Aquifer. These fields are abandoned when the aquifers dry up, resulting in erosion of the unused farmland. Conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) were established to address this problem but have been unsuccessful in restoring native grasslands in abandoned croplands in southwestern Kansas. We hypothesized that insect …
Ecological Controls On The Campanian Distribution Of Hesperornis (Aves: Hesperornithiformes) In The Western Interior Seaway, Blake Chapman
Ecological Controls On The Campanian Distribution Of Hesperornis (Aves: Hesperornithiformes) In The Western Interior Seaway, Blake Chapman
Master's Theses
The epicontinental Western Interior Seaway (WIS) of Late Cretaceous North America provided a unique marine habitat for cephalopods, fish, marine reptiles, and the foot-propelled diving seabird Hesperornis. While several predator-prey relationships among Hesperornis or other hesperornithiforms and other WIS animals have been hypothesized based on gut contents, bite marks, and coprolites/colonites, ecological relationships have not been quantitatively tested. Paleontological species distribution modeling (SDM) studies have focused on extinct non-marine taxa and marine invertebrates, with only two marine vertebrate studies of extant taxa. Here, two SDM methods were used to test the influence of vertebrate faunas, sedimentary rock type, paleogeography, …