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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Vulnerability Of Protected Areas To Human Encroachment, Climate Change And Fire In The Fragmented Tropical Forests Of West Africa, Francis Kwabena Dwomoh
Vulnerability Of Protected Areas To Human Encroachment, Climate Change And Fire In The Fragmented Tropical Forests Of West Africa, Francis Kwabena Dwomoh
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Upper Guinean region of West Africa is home to some of the most globally significant tropical biodiversity hotspots, providing ecosystem services that are crucial for the region’s socio-economic and environmental wellbeing. Nonetheless, following decades of human-caused destruction of natural habitats, protected areas currently remain the only significant refugia of original vegetation relics in landscapes that are highly fragmented. Aside from having strong geographic variation in land use, climate, vegetation, and human population, the region has also experienced remarkable biophysical and socio-economic changes in recent decades. All these factors influence the fire regime and the vulnerability of forests within protected …
Black-Tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys Ludovicianus) State-And-Transition Model For Loamy Ecological Sites In Mlra 62 In Custer State Park, South Dakota, Mark R. Hendrix
Black-Tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys Ludovicianus) State-And-Transition Model For Loamy Ecological Sites In Mlra 62 In Custer State Park, South Dakota, Mark R. Hendrix
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys ludovicianus) are native burrowing rodents that occupy large areas in the shortgrass and mixed-grass prairies of the Northern Great Plains. They are an important component of these prairie systems due to their impacts on plant communities. Currently State-and-Transition models (STMs) for grassland Ecological Site Descriptions (ESDs) address grazing by livestock as a major factor affecting states and phases within states. Impacts from other grazers, such as prairie dogs, are either not addressed directly, or are included only in a transition to a generalized early seral state. There are, however, dramatic differences in plant communities …
Evaluation Of Methods Used To Improve Grasslands As Ring-Necked Pheasant (Phasianus Colchicus) Brood Habitat, Mandy Orth
Evaluation Of Methods Used To Improve Grasslands As Ring-Necked Pheasant (Phasianus Colchicus) Brood Habitat, Mandy Orth
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Management practices designed for upland game species often focus on nest survival and hen winter survival due to the importance of these life history stages on population vital rates. However, chick survival is an important component of gallinaceous bird population dynamics, but it is poorly understood and often tends to be overlooked. Ideal brood habitat not only provides open understory for easy movement and canopy cover for protection, but also provides an abundance of arthropod foods for chicks. It has been hypothesized that restricted movement of chicks through thick vegetation in unmanaged grasslands results in lower brood survival rates. Research …
Evaluating Bighorn Sheep Herd Response After Selective Removal Of Mycoplasma Ovipneumoniae Chronic Shedders, Tyler J. Garwood
Evaluating Bighorn Sheep Herd Response After Selective Removal Of Mycoplasma Ovipneumoniae Chronic Shedders, Tyler J. Garwood
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Infected individuals vary in their contribution to disease persistence, and chronically infected individuals may sustain disease in a population. One disease that might persist in a population through chronically infected individuals is pneumonia in wild sheep. Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae (Mo), a pathogen of Caprinae commonly present in domestic sheep and goats, strongly correlates with pneumonia epizootics when it infects wild sheep populations. These epizootics can cause 40-100% herd mortality in an initial all-age dieoff, precipitate annual lamb mortality as high as 100% in following years, and sustain adult mortality long after initial all-age dieoffs. We conducted an experiment in the Black …