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- Keyword
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- California – Mojave Desert (7)
- New (6)
- Southwest (6)
- Invasive plants (4)
- Revegetation (4)
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- Desert plants (3)
- Endemic plants (3)
- Wildfires – Environmental aspects (3)
- Bromus rubens (2)
- Fire ecology (2)
- Forest management (2)
- Forests and forestry (2)
- Gambel oak (2)
- Pinus ponderosa (2)
- Ponderosa pine (2)
- Soil seed banks (2)
- Arid land (1)
- Arid regions (1)
- Arizona (1)
- Blackbrush – Effect of fire on (1)
- Bromus rubens – Effect of fire on (1)
- Coleogyne ramosissima (1)
- Desert conservation – Research (1)
- Desert plants – Effect of fires on (1)
- Desert plants – Effect of fire on (1)
- Diversity (1)
- Dust mitigation (1)
- Dust – Control (1)
- Dust – Health aspects (1)
- Ecology -- Research (1)
Articles 1 - 10 of 10
Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Disturbance And Plant Succession In The Mojave And Sonoran Deserts Of The American Southwest, Scott R. Abella
Disturbance And Plant Succession In The Mojave And Sonoran Deserts Of The American Southwest, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Disturbances such as fire, land clearing, and road building remove vegetation and can have major influences on public health through effects on air quality, aesthetics, recreational opportunities, natural resource availability, and economics. Plant recovery and succession following disturbance are poorly understood in arid lands relative to more temperate regions. This study quantitatively reviewed vegetation reestablishment following a variety of disturbances in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts of southwestern North America. A total of 47 studies met inclusion criteria for the review. The time estimated by 29 individual studies for full reestablishment of total perennial plant cover was 76 years. Although …
Trying To Beat The Brome: Understanding Establishment Thresholds And Choosing Competitive Native Species At Parashant National Monument, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel
Trying To Beat The Brome: Understanding Establishment Thresholds And Choosing Competitive Native Species At Parashant National Monument, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Desert fires fueled by exotic grasses like the omnipresent red brome (Bromus rubens) can be intense and cause widespread mortality of native vegetation. Native desert scrub communities such as those dominated by blackbrush (Coleogyne ramosissima) do not readily reestablish after fire (Abella 2009) and may even become more abundant in the post-burn landscape initiating a fire cycle that occurs at a greater frequency than the recovery time of the long-lived desert perennial community.
Native Species Interactions With Red Brome: Suggestions For Burn-Area Revegetation, Scott R. Abella
Native Species Interactions With Red Brome: Suggestions For Burn-Area Revegetation, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
In deserts, native perennial plants often actually facilitate the establishment of exotic annual grasses. One of our focal areas of research is to identify native species for use in revegetation projects that reduce the establishment of exotic annual grasses, or at least do not strongly facilitate exotic species establishment. An initial research effort involving a competition experiment of red brome with native species and a correlational field study of brome distribution among native perennial plants is in press with the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management.
Heat And Smoke Effects On Red Brome Soil Seed Banks, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel
Heat And Smoke Effects On Red Brome Soil Seed Banks, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Management of exotic plants that are annuals entails understanding and managing their soil seed banks. We completed a study of the influences of heat and liquid smoke on red brome (Bromus rubens) soil seed banks collected from Red Rock Canyon in southern Nevada as part of a collaborative fire effects monitoring effort with Bureau of Land Management - Las Vegas. We collected the samples from the 2005 Loop Fire, where we observed in a monitoring field study that exotic grasses such as red brome were relatively sparse in the first 2-3 years (which were during a dry period) following the …
Synthesis Completed Of Post-Fire Recovery Of Native Perennials In The Mojave, Sonoran Deserts, Scott R. Abella
Synthesis Completed Of Post-Fire Recovery Of Native Perennials In The Mojave, Sonoran Deserts, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Literature syntheses to develop status of knowledge reports are important to integrate and summarize the scattered scientific literature on a particular topic. The isolation and fragmentation of scientific literature on a topic is not necessarily a shortcoming of science. Rather, it is simply a consequence of having (1) research published in a diverse array of journals, (2) articles build on each other and therefore articles relevant to a particular topic can be published decades apart, and (3) funding virtually impossible to secure to do these periodic assessments of what we know and don’t know (competitive science grants want researchers to …
Env 492 Undergraduate Research Symposium, Scott R. Abella
Env 492 Undergraduate Research Symposium, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
In spring semester since January, UNLV Environmental Studies and Biology students in ENV 492 (Undergraduate Research) have conducted a wide variety of ecological research projects.
Progress In Strategic Research Areas, Scott R. Abella
Progress In Strategic Research Areas, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Three years ago through conversations with resource managers, assessing the status of knowledge of the scientific literature, and our own interests, we set forth several strategic research areas that we believed would be timely for advancing Mojave Desert conservation and management.
New Book Chapter Reviewing Mojave Desert Revegetation Practices Is Forthcoming, Scott R. Abella
New Book Chapter Reviewing Mojave Desert Revegetation Practices Is Forthcoming, Scott R. Abella
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
I was invited to write a chapter for a forthcoming book on Arid Environments to be published by Nova Science Publishers. This book is anticipated to appear in late 2008 or early 2009, and we will be able to provide additional details about the entire book at that time. I co-authored our chapter on revegetation with Alice Newton, Vegetation Manager at Lake Mead National Recreation Area. We systematically reviewed 23 published studies of planting or seeding native species in the Mojave Desert.
Estimating Soil Seed Bank Characteristics In Ponderosa Pine Forests Using Vegetation And Forest-Floor Data, Scott R. Abella, Judith D. Springer
Estimating Soil Seed Bank Characteristics In Ponderosa Pine Forests Using Vegetation And Forest-Floor Data, Scott R. Abella, Judith D. Springer
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Soil seed banks are important for vegetation management because they contain propagules of species that may be considered desirable or undesirable for site colonization after management and disturbance events. Knowledge of seed bank size and composition before planning management activities facilitates proactive management by providing early alerts of exotic species presence and of abilities of seed banks to promote colonization by desirable species. We developed models in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests in northern Arizona to estimate the size and richness of mineral soil seed banks using readily observable vegetation and forestfloor characteristics. Regression models using three or fewer predictors …
Fire Effects On Gambel Oak In Southwestern Ponderosa Pine-Oak Forests, Scott R. Abella, Peter Z. Fule
Fire Effects On Gambel Oak In Southwestern Ponderosa Pine-Oak Forests, Scott R. Abella, Peter Z. Fule
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) is ecologically and aesthetically valuable in southwestern ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. Fire effects on Gambel oak are important because fire may be used in pine-oak forests to manage oak directly or to accomplish other management objectives. We used published literature to: (1) ascertain historical fire regimes in pine-oak forests, (2) discern prescribed burning effects on Gambel oak survival and diameter growth, and (3) provide suggestions for using fire to manage oak. Frequent fire is part of Gambel oak’s historical environment, as historical fire return intervals often averaged less than 10 years in pine-oak forests. More …