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Articles 1 - 9 of 9
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 …
Early Post-Fire Plant Establishment On A Mojave Desert Burn, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel, Christina L. Lund, Jessica E. Spencer
Early Post-Fire Plant Establishment On A Mojave Desert Burn, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel, Christina L. Lund, Jessica E. Spencer
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
Fire has become more extensive in recent decades in southwestern United States arid lands. Burned areas pose management challenges and opportunities, and increasing our understanding of post-fire plant colonization may assist management decision-making. We examined plant communities, soils, and soil seed banks two years after the 2005 Loop Fire, located in a creosote-blackbrush community in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in southern Nevada’s Mojave Desert. Based on a spring sampling of 20, 0.01-ha plots, live + dead cover of the exotic annual Bromus rubens averaged nine times lower on the burn than on a paired unburned area. Perennial species …
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.
Opportunities For New Collaborative Projects, Scott R. Abella, Jill E. Craig
Opportunities For New Collaborative Projects, Scott R. Abella, Jill E. Craig
Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications
The Research Group is currently working in successful partnerships with Lake Mead National Recreation Area, BLM Las Vegas, Desert National Wildlife Refuge (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), Joshua Tree National Park, and in collaboration with the Ecological Restoration Institute, the U.S. Forest Service (Region 3).