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Fort Hays State University

Master's Theses

Theses/Dissertations

Extinction

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Effects Of Environmental And Anthropogenic Factors On The Range Contraction Of Bird And Mammal Species, Patrice M. Betz Nov 2015

Effects Of Environmental And Anthropogenic Factors On The Range Contraction Of Bird And Mammal Species, Patrice M. Betz

Master's Theses

The largest contributor to biodiversity loss is habitat destruction caused by humans. A common consequence of habitat destruction is a reduction in the geographic range of a species. Little research has been done to separate the contribution of anthropogenic and environmental variables to the extinction or persistence of species that have experienced range contraction. In this thesis, I examined the relative effects of several variables (elevation, mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature, human population density, distance from roads, and proportion of land converted to built-up land, cropland, and rangeland) on the geographic ranges of declining bird and mammal species from …


Climate Change: Implications For Montane Mammals Of The Great Basin, Georgina Yvette Jacquez May 2010

Climate Change: Implications For Montane Mammals Of The Great Basin, Georgina Yvette Jacquez

Master's Theses

Climate change threatens biodiversity; in particular, species with narrow distributions and specific habitat requirements. The Great Basin provides an excellent model system to evaluate the effects of climate change on species with isolated distributions and specific habitat requirements. I have evaluated the McDonald and Brown (1992) model that examined the effects of climate change on montane mammals of the Great Basin based on its underlying assumptions and model predictions. I have modeled the distributions of twelve montane mammal species found in the Great Basin and identified potential local extinctions by using maximum entropy modeling (Maxent) for two emission scenarios of …