Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Increased Abundance Of The Common Raven Within The Ranges Of Greater And Gunnison Sage-Grouse: Influence Of Anthropogenic Subsidies And Fire, Jonathan B. Dinkins, Lindsey R. Perry, Jeffrey L. Beck, Jimmy D. Taylor Jan 2021

Increased Abundance Of The Common Raven Within The Ranges Of Greater And Gunnison Sage-Grouse: Influence Of Anthropogenic Subsidies And Fire, Jonathan B. Dinkins, Lindsey R. Perry, Jeffrey L. Beck, Jimmy D. Taylor

USDA Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The common raven (Corvus corax; raven) is native to North America and has increased in abundance, especially throughout western North America, during the last century. Human subsidies have facilitated raven dispersal into less suitable habitats and enabled these populations to maintain higher annual survival and reproduction. Concomitantly, overabundant raven populations are impacting other native at-risk species such as the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and potentially the Gunnison sage-grouse (C. minimus). Using Breeding Bird Survey data from 1995–2014, we evaluated raven count data to quantitatively describe changes in abundance and expansion into sagebrush ( …


Plant Community Response To Disturbances In Nebraska Sandhills Upland Prairie, Josiah D. Dallmann Jan 2018

Plant Community Response To Disturbances In Nebraska Sandhills Upland Prairie, Josiah D. Dallmann

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Historically, disturbances shaped prairie ecosystems both directly through events like fire and soil moving by animals, as well as indirectly through dynamic rainfall patterns and periodic flux in seed availabilities. We hypothesized that the implementation of several distinct disturbance events in Nebraska Sandhills upland prairie would have measurable effects on plant community composition. We implemented mid-spring fire, soil disturbance in the form of disking, seed addition of native forbs on disked plots, as well as early summer supplemental watering (to mimic minor rainfall events during abnormally dry periods) during 2016 and 2017. Plant community response during the first and second …


Soil Chemical Responses To Fire Seasonality And Frequency In A Texas Grassland, Domingo M. Jariel Jr., R. James Ansley, Betty A. Kramp, David L. Jones Aug 2014

Soil Chemical Responses To Fire Seasonality And Frequency In A Texas Grassland, Domingo M. Jariel Jr., R. James Ansley, Betty A. Kramp, David L. Jones

The Prairie Naturalist

On a clay-loam mixed grassland dominated by honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa Torr.) in northern Texas, we quantified soil pH, soil organic carbon (OC), electrical conductivity (EC), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), zinc (Zn), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn) and copper (Cu) in response to various effects of summer and winter fire treatments from 1991–1996. We conducted summer fire between August and September, and winter fire between January and March. Treatments that included summer fires increased soil pH, EC, Na, and Cu and temporarily decreased soil OC and Mn (P ≤ 0.05). The winter fire treatment …


Recruitment Of Larix Sibirica Ledeb. In Closed Forest Stands, On Clear-Felling Sites And At Fire-Sites In The Forests Of Mongolia, Vasiliy T. Yarmishko, Nikolay N. Slemnev Jan 2012

Recruitment Of Larix Sibirica Ledeb. In Closed Forest Stands, On Clear-Felling Sites And At Fire-Sites In The Forests Of Mongolia, Vasiliy T. Yarmishko, Nikolay N. Slemnev

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

The paper deals with recruitment patterns in larch forests of Mongolia following anthropogenic impacts (felling, fires), and describes successional trends in highland forest communities. It is established that mass seed recruitment of Larix sibirica Ledeb. took place during anomalous combinations of hydrothermal conditions supposedly occurring at periods of about 100 years. During the last decades, frequent fires of various intensities put serious constraints on reforestation of the larch, and induced successional trends in disturbed forests.


Fire Does Not Alter Vegetation In Infertile Prairie, Johannes M.H. Knops Jan 2006

Fire Does Not Alter Vegetation In Infertile Prairie, Johannes M.H. Knops

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

The paradigm in prairie ecology is that fire is one of the key factors deter-mining vegetation composition. fire can impact grassland ecosystems in various ways, including changing plant species composition and inducing nitro-gen loss. I found that 17 years of different burning frequencies in infertile grassland had only a minor impact on the vegetation composition and diversity. The only major impact from increasing the frequency of fires was a decrease of Poa pratensis abundance. However, other plant species did not r-spond to the change in Poa abundance. This result contrasts with previous studies in savannas and more productive grasslands, where …