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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Modeling Maine’S Rockweed Harvest, Meagan Hennessey
Modeling Maine’S Rockweed Harvest, Meagan Hennessey
Journal of Environmental and Resource Economics at Colby
Currently, Maine is in a political struggle over the best way to manage the harvesting of Rockweed, or Ascophyllum nodosum. As the dominant macro algae along the state’s rocky intertidal zone it supports over 150 different species, meaning its loss could impact food web stability, protection of endangered species, and support of economically viable harvests. This work takes parameters found in the literature to create a Stella model, which is then manipulated to explore the relative impact of possible management strategies. It is found that a strictly accurate model is not possible to create given the current biological knowledge and …
Winter Bird Use Of Conservation Reserve Program Fields Harvested For Biomass, Les D. Murray, Louis B. Best
Winter Bird Use Of Conservation Reserve Program Fields Harvested For Biomass, Les D. Murray, Louis B. Best
Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS
As Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts expire, many fields may be returned to agricultural production. Growing switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) as a biomass fuel is an alternative to returning fields to rowcrops. CRP fields provide winter cover for birds, but the harvest of biomass would remove most of the cover and affect bird use of the fields. We estimated winter bird abundances in nonharvested, total-harvested, and partially (strip) harvested switchgrass fields in southern Iowa. Song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) were observed only in strip-harvested fields and ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) were observed only in nonharvested fields and uncut areas of strip-harvested fields. …