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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Ungulate Browsing On Willow (Salix Spp.) Communities Within The Northern Range Of Yellowstone, Donald L. Belile Jr.
Spatio-Temporal Analysis Of Ungulate Browsing On Willow (Salix Spp.) Communities Within The Northern Range Of Yellowstone, Donald L. Belile Jr.
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Variation in ungulate browsing intensity on willow (Salix spp.) communities across Yellowstone’s northern range has been attributed to various biophysical factors including climate, topography, and predators. These studies were conducted without a long-term browsing dataset; they lacked a spatially extensive sampling design, and did not include dynamic snow characteristics known to affect ungulate mobility, habitat selection, and foraging strategies. We therefore focused on snow, an extreme landscape level disturbance that places nutritional stress on ungulates during the winter when most browsing on shrubs occurs. We applied a non-destructive sampling method by consecutively recording whether stem leaders were browsed between …
Baseline Study Of Recovering Headwater Streams In The Sapphire Mountains, Western Montana, Morgan Vinyard
Baseline Study Of Recovering Headwater Streams In The Sapphire Mountains, Western Montana, Morgan Vinyard
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Many riparian areas in the western United States have been degraded by grazing and logging. In the year 2000, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) re-initiated an effort to identify and characterize reference streams, or least impacted streams in each region of the state. In Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, most streams have been impacted by grazing, irrigation, and timber production. The Montana DEQ has not been able to identify reference streams in the Sapphire Mountains on the east side of this valley. MPG Ranch, located on the west-facing slopes of the Sapphire Mountains and purchased in 2009 by a conservation-minded …
Synthesis Of Satellite Microwave Observations For Monitoring Global Land-Atmosphere Co2 Exchange, Lucas Alan Jones
Synthesis Of Satellite Microwave Observations For Monitoring Global Land-Atmosphere Co2 Exchange, Lucas Alan Jones
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
This dissertation describes the estimation, error quantification, and incorporation of land surface information from microwave satellite remote sensing for modeling global ecosystem land-atmosphere net CO2 exchange. Retrieval algorithms were developed for estimating soil moisture, surface water, surface temperature, and vegetation phenology from microwave imagery timeseries. Soil moisture retrievals were merged with model-based soil moisture estimates and incorporated into a light-use efficiency model for vegetation productivity coupled to a soil decomposition model. Results, including state and uncertainty estimates, were evaluated with a global eddy covariance flux tower network and other independent global model- and remote-sensing based products.