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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Community Economic Impacts Of Large Wildfires: A Case Study From Trinity County, California, Emily Jane Davis, Cassandra Moseley, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Pamela J. Jakes Jun 2014

The Community Economic Impacts Of Large Wildfires: A Case Study From Trinity County, California, Emily Jane Davis, Cassandra Moseley, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Pamela J. Jakes

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wildfires are increasing in severity and frequency in the American West, but there is limited understanding of their economic effects at the community level. We conducted a case study of the impacts of large wildfires in 2008 in Trinity County, California, by examining labor market, suppression spending, and qualitative interview data. We found that the 2008 fires had interrelated effects on several economic sectors in the county. Labor market data indicated a decrease in total private-sector employment and wages and an increase in public-sector employment and wages during the summer of 2008 compared to the previous year, while interviews captured …


Assessing The Homogenization Of Urban Land Management With An Application To Us Residential Lawn Care, Colin Polsky, J. Morgan Grove, Chris Knudson, Peter M. Groffman, Neil D. Bettez, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Sharon J. Hall, James B. Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Laura A. Ogden, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Diane E. Pataki, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Meredith K. Steele Mar 2014

Assessing The Homogenization Of Urban Land Management With An Application To Us Residential Lawn Care, Colin Polsky, J. Morgan Grove, Chris Knudson, Peter M. Groffman, Neil D. Bettez, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Sharon J. Hall, James B. Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Laura A. Ogden, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Diane E. Pataki, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Meredith K. Steele

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Changes in land use, land cover, and land management present some of the greatest potential global environmental challenges of the 21st century. Urbanization, one of the principal drivers of these transformations, is commonly thought to be generating land changes that are increasingly similar. An implication of this multiscale homogenization hypothesis is that the ecosystem structure and function and human behaviors associated with urbanization should be more similar in certain kinds of urbanized locations across biogeophysical gradients than across urbanization gradients in places with similar biogeophysical characteristics. This paper introduces an analytical framework for testing this hypothesis, and applies the framework …


Riparian Vegetation Assemblages And Associated Landscape Factors Across An Urbanizing Metropolitan Area, Christa Von Behren, Andrew Evans Dietrich, J. Alan Yeakley Mar 2014

Riparian Vegetation Assemblages And Associated Landscape Factors Across An Urbanizing Metropolitan Area, Christa Von Behren, Andrew Evans Dietrich, J. Alan Yeakley

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

While diverse, native riparian vegetation provides important functions, it remains unclear to what extent these assemblages can persist in urban areas, and under what conditions. We characterized forested riparian vegetation communities across an urbanizing metropolitan area and examined their relationships with surrounding land cover. We hypothesized that native and hydrophilic species assemblages would correlate with forest cover in the landscape. For each of 30 sites in the Portland–Vancouver metro area, we recorded vegetation at 1-cm intervals along 3 transects using the line-intercept method. Land cover was characterized at 2 scales: within 500 m of each site and across the entire …


Ecological Homogenization Of Urban Usa, Peter M. Groffman, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Neil D. Bettez, J. Morgan Grove, Sharon J. Hall, James B. Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Diane E. Pataki, Colin Polsky, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Meredith K. Steele Feb 2014

Ecological Homogenization Of Urban Usa, Peter M. Groffman, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Neil D. Bettez, J. Morgan Grove, Sharon J. Hall, James B. Heffernan, Sarah E. Hobbie, Kelli L. Larson, Jennifer L. Morse, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne, Diane E. Pataki, Colin Polsky, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Meredith K. Steele

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

A visually apparent but scientifically untested outcome of land-use change is homogenization across urban areas, where neighborhoods in different parts of the country have similar patterns of roads, residential lots, commercial areas, and aquatic features. We hypothesize that this homogenization extends to ecological structure and also to ecosystem functions such as carbon dynamics and microclimate, with continental-scale implications. Further, we suggest that understanding urban homogenization will provide the basis for understanding the impacts of urban land-use change from local to continental scales. Here, we show how multi-scale, multi-disciplinary datasets from six metropolitan areas that cover the major climatic regions of …


Getting Plant Conservation Right (Or Not): The Case Of The United States, Kayri Havens, Andrea T. Kramer, Edward O. Guerrant Jr. Jan 2014

Getting Plant Conservation Right (Or Not): The Case Of The United States, Kayri Havens, Andrea T. Kramer, Edward O. Guerrant Jr.

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Effective plant conservation includes addressing basic needs such as information about species distribution and rarity; research, management, education, and training capacity to mitigate threats facing threatened species; policy and funding to support continued capacity and conservation; and, ultimately, a public that understands and supports the importance of plants and the need for their conservation. Coordination of plant conservation efforts is also needed to ensure that resources and expertise are used in a strategic, efficient, and effective manner.We argue that no country is currently getting plant conservation right; plants are becoming increasingly rare around the world. Plants are often not fully …


Sampling For Effective Ex Situ Plant Conservation, Edward O. Guerrant Jr., Kayri Havens, Pati Vitt Jan 2014

Sampling For Effective Ex Situ Plant Conservation, Edward O. Guerrant Jr., Kayri Havens, Pati Vitt

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sampling a whole flora or any significant subset for ex situ conservation purposes is a complex, long-term proposition. Thus, it is important to consider what constitutes an adequate sample not only for all taxa as a whole but also for each taxon individually as well as how to strategically schedule collection over time. There are five basic sampling questions: from which species to collect, from how many and which populations, from how many and which individuals, how many and what kind of propagules to collect, and, finally, at what point is the desired sample size too great for a population …