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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Changes In Ecosystem Processes And Functional Traits Over An Elevational Gradient, Tiana Issa
Changes In Ecosystem Processes And Functional Traits Over An Elevational Gradient, Tiana Issa
Honors Theses
Elevation gradients have been used to understand how climate change impacts various ecosystems processes by substituting distance across elevation with time, reflecting a previous, colder climate. To monitor the changes in soil organic carbon (SOC), plant community, and functional traits across time in the face of climate change, this study used space-for-time substitution to emulate a long-term study with elevational gradients and revisited the same gradient for nearly two decades to monitor elevational effects across time. With this research, I aim to answer the following questions: (1) How does elevation impact ecosystem processes and alpine plant traits? (2) How does …
Impact Of The North American Monsoon On Molt Migrant Passerines, Liuqingqing Yang
Impact Of The North American Monsoon On Molt Migrant Passerines, Liuqingqing Yang
Honors Theses
Breeding, molt, and migration place considerable yearly demands on migrating passerines in North America. Due to conflicts in energy allocation, many species have evolved migration strategies that prevent temporal overlap in these processes. However, there is recent evidence that some passerines which breed in western North America migrate to intermediate stopover sites to carry out molt, conflating molt and migration. Factors influencing the evolution of such a strategy are believed to include both aridity on breeding grounds and dependable flushes of late-summer productivity in the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. This productivity occurs due to the brisk rainfall of …
The Impact Of Climate Change On The Migration Phenology Of New England’S Anadromous River Herring And American Shad, Charles K. Cobb
The Impact Of Climate Change On The Migration Phenology Of New England’S Anadromous River Herring And American Shad, Charles K. Cobb
Honors Theses
Anadromous fish play important roles in food webs and nutrient cycling in both aquatic and marine ecosystems. As a result of climate change however, anadromous fish’s migration timing has begun to change, with potentially deleterious consequences to both anadromous fish, and the species that depend on them. Western coastal US studies have linked earlier anadromous fish returns to warming marine temperatures and changes in river flow regimes, but the exact temperatures thresholds that anadromous fish respond to, and the relative importance of temperatures and river flows, remain somewhat unknown. Additionally, there has been relatively little research on anadromous fish phenology …