Other Forestry and Forest Sciences Commons^™

Carrying Capacity For Species Richness As A Context For Conservation: A Case Study Of North American Breeding Birds, Andrew J. Hansen, Linda Bowers Phillips, Curtis H. Flather, Jim Robinson-Cox

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Aim To demonstrate that the concept of carrying capacity for species richness (S_K) is highly relevant to the conservation of biodiversity, and to estimate the spatial pattern of S_K for native landbirds as a basis for conservation planning.

Location North America.

Methods We evaluated the leading hypotheses on biophysical factors affecting species richness for Breeding Bird Survey routes from areas with little influence of human activities.We then derived a best model based on information theory, and used this model to extrapolate SK across North America based on the biophysical predictor variables. The predictor variables included the …

Evaluation Of The Modis Lai Product Using Independent Lidar-Derived Lai: A Case Study In Mixed Conifer Forest, Jennifer L.R. Jensen, Karen S. Humes, Andrew T. Hudak, Lee A. Vierling, Eric Delmelle

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

This study presents an alternative assessment of the MODIS LAI product for a 58,000 ha evergreen needleleaf forest located in the western Rocky Mountain range in northern Idaho by using lidar data to model (R²=0.86, RMSE=0.76) and map LAI at higher resolution across a large number of MODIS pixels in their entirety. Moderate resolution (30 m) lidar-based LAI estimates were aggregated to the resolution of the 1-km MODIS LAI product and compared to temporally-coincident MODIS retrievals. Differences in the MODIS and lidar-derived values of LAI were grouped and analyzed by several different factors, including MODIS retrieval algorithm, sun/sensor …