Lichen Functional Trait Variation Along an East-west Climatic Gradient in Oregon and Among Habitats in Katmai National Park, Alaska PDF Download
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Author: Kaleigh Spickerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lichens
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Author: Kaleigh Spickerman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lichens
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Author: Peter Nelson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Caribou
Languages : en
Pages : 148
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Lichens play many important roles in subarctic terrestrial ecosystems by fixing nitrogen, colonizing rock and gravel, stabilizing otherwise bare soil, adding significantly to vegetation biodiversity and serving as the primary food for caribou in the winter. In these chapters, I analyzed lichen community and ecological trait structure along environmental gradients, map lichens using some of their unique spectral properties to generate lichen maps and study caribou habitat selection patterns in relation to lichens and other habitat variables. Morphological and life history traits of lichens influence their ecological roles through physiological limitations imposed by their form and photobionts, the algal or cyanobacterial partner. In chapter 2, I analyzed the lichen traits in relationship to environmental gradients, other forms of vegetation and time since fire in Denali National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Lichens with different photobionts reached different maxima along environmental gradients, these corresponding to variable water availability or specific biotic factors thought to favor that photobiont. Green algal lichens were most abundant in the alpine whereas cyanolichens peaked where shrub cover increased. Tripartite lichens were most abundant in middle elevation, mossy areas. Lichen growthforms peaked along desiccation and water absorption gradients. Lichens with small vegetative propagules were most abundant in lowland forests. Recent fire favored simple, Cladonia-form lichens with soredia that grow on wood whereas erect branched fruticose lichens, the "reindeer lichens", had only partially recovered 20-100 years after fire. These results imply interacting forces of water regulation, dispersal and optimum conditions for photosynthesis drive lichen trait frequency and abundance. The fungal partner within the lichen symbiosis produces many unique compounds that are often brightly colored. Other studies have attempted to map lichens using their distinctive spectral properties but no study has yet to target specific lichen compounds in order to better model lichen cover. In chapter 3, I focused on one yellow lichen compound, usnic acid, as the target for modeling lichen cover using Landsat 7 ETM+ satellite data. Usnic lichen cover had non-linear relationships with the three best predictors; elevation, blue and near-infrared bandpasses. Using these three predictors, I generated an usnic lichen map for Denali, which I use in chapter 4 for analyzing caribou habitat selection. I also modeled and mapped other vegetation groups corresponding to caribou diet items used later. My results show that some lichens may be directly mapped from space by targeting this specific compound produced by the fungus. Caribou depend on lichens for up to 66% of their winter diet but other factors, such as snow, affect their access to the lichens. In chapter 4, I analyzed caribou habitat selection over 20 years in Denali using vegetation maps from chapter 3, climate data and other environmental variables. Over the two-decade period, caribou selected middle elevation, open areas with high graminoid cover and earlier snow-free dates. As each winter progressed, caribou aggregated where there was higher lichen cover and earlier snow-melt. Caribou selected habitat differently between years, which I collapsed into three different habitat/year groups: (1) years where most animals were in low elevation, flat terrain where there was low lichen and conifer cover but high graminoid and shrub cover with variable snow; (2) years caribou went to middle elevations with deeper snow and rugged terrain and moderate graminoid and lichen cover; and (3) years where caribou were dispersed west in low elevation woodlands with high lichen cover. My results show interacting factors determine caribou habitat selection at multiple spatial scales, specifically the importance of open, tussock tundra and long-term trends in snow melt at long time scales and lichen and snow-melt at shorter time scales. This research improves our understanding of the regional distribution and abundance of lichens in relation to higher plants, fire, and caribou.
Author: Sarah Jovan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Air
Languages : en
Pages : 128
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Lichens are highly valued ecological indicators known for their sensitivity to a wide variety of environmental stressors like air quality and climate change. This report summarizes baseline results from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Lichen Community Indicator covering the first full cycle of data collection (1998-2001, 2003) for Washington, Oregon, and California. During this period, FIA conducted 972 surveys of epiphytic macrolichen communities for monitoring both spatial and long-term temporal trends in forest health. Major research findings are presented with emphasis on lichen biodiversity as well as bioindication of air quality and climate. Considerable effort is devoted to mapping geographic patterns and defining lichen indicator species suitable for estimating air quality and climate.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest reserves
Languages : en
Pages : 16
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Author: Chiska C. Derr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lichens
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Lichen sensitivity to air quality has been recognized in Europe for over 125 years: recently Federal agencies in this country have begun using lichens as air quality bioindicators. This study presents the results of three different approaches to air quality biomonitoring using lichens: (1) a lichen community analysis, (2) an elemental analysis of lichen tissue content, and (3) the growth of removable lichen transplants. The lichen community and elemental tissue content analyses were part of an air quality baseline on the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska. The lichen transplant experiment compared the growth of three different lichen species and evaluated and refined a transplant technique in western Oregon. Lichen communities were sampled on 50 Pinus contorta peatlands in southeast Alaska. These peatlands make good air quality biomonitoring sites because: (1) the trees are slow growing and provide stable substrates for lichen colonization; (2) many branches are at eye level, making the canopy epiphytes easily observable; (3) the scattered, open distribution of the trees allows for good air circulation on the sites; and (4) precipitation, light conditions, and relative humidity are high, which stimulate lichen growth. A total of 100 lichen species were encountered during whole-plot ocular surveys of each plot. Multivariate ordination revealed what appears to be a successional gradient represented by high cover of Bryoria species at older sites and high cover of Platismatia norvegica, P. glauca, Hypogymnia enteromorpha sens. lat. and H. inactiva at younger sites. A second pattern revealed by ordination analysis appears to be a climatic gradient with high Alectoria sarmentosa cover on moister, warmer sites, and high cover of Bryoria species on drier, colder sites. The first two gradients contained 35% and 21%, respectively, of the information in the analytical data set (cumulative r2=56%). Elemental tissue content of Alectoria sarmentosa was determined from 43 of the peatland plots in southeast Alaska. The range of values for 16 elements are reported and compared to other regional studies; the ranges of values for most elements were within normal background levels. Quality assurance techniques are described for separation of laboratory and field noise from elemental content signal. Principal components analysis was used to create three synthetic gradients of plot-level elemental content. The first three principal components captured 55% of the correlation structure among elements. Iron (r=-0.91), aluminum (r=-0.80) and chromium (r=-0.71) are all highly correlated with the first gradient. This gradient could represent sites enriched by elements from dirt; aluminum and iron silicates are both persistent and abundant components of weathered rock and soil. Potassium (r=-0.82), phosphorous (r=-0.63), zinc (r=-0.60), manganese (r=-0.58), magnesium (r=-0.51) and nickel (r=0.54) are correlated with the second gradient. Many of these elements are supplemented by salt water aerosols (Nieboer et al. 1978; Rhoades 1988). Lead (r=0.70) and cadmium (r=0.59) were correlated with the third axis. This gradients could represent enrichment from fossil fuel combustion. Recommendations for standardizing future regional studies of lichen elemental content are made. Removable lichen transplants were constructed using live thalli of known weight, a 5 cm length of nylon monofilament, silicone glue, and reusable attachment mechanisms. Transplants were returned to several sites in Western Oregon and were weighed every several months for 13 months. Reference standards for each species were used to correct for changes in lichen water content due to changes in lab humidity. Despite apparent vigor, Alectoria proved unsuitable for repeated weighings because of biomass loss due to fragmentation (average of 9% biomass loss). Growth of Evernia and Lobaria transplants differed both between species and between sites. Average growth over the 13 months for Evernia in the foothills and valley was 40% and 30% respectively; for Lobaria it was 16% and 15%. Differences in growth between species could be due to different: (1) growth rates; (2) sensitivities to air quality; (3) sensitivities to microhabitat; and (4) sensitivities to transplant trauma. Differences in growth between valley and foothill sites could be due to differences in: (1) micro- or macrohabitat conditions; and (2) air quality.
Author: Fred H. Everest
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aquatic habitats
Languages : en
Pages : 146
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Book Description
Management of riparian habitats is controversial because land use policies have historically emphasized economic values (e.g., timber production) at the expense of ecological and social values. Attempting to manage these valuable resources to attain the greatest combination of benefits has created a long-term controversy that continues to the present. Our analysis indicates that at mid to large spatial scales, healthy riparian ecosystems and land management activities are not mutually exclusive, but the degree of compatibility is determined by policy decisions based on competing demands and pressing timelines as well as available scientific knowledge. Current management schemes on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska are appropriately addressing large spatial scales and incorporating the principles of disturbance ecology. We found no scientific evidence that either the default prescriptions or the options for watershed analysis in the Northwest Forest Plan and Tongass Land Management Plan provide more protection than necessary to meet stated riparian management goals. We believe that additional alternative riparian management strategies could be implemented and evaluated in concert to shorten the time needed to realize effective strategies that fully meet riparian management goals.
Author: Erin P. Martin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Lichen communities
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Lichens are an important part of the biota in western Oregon forests, where they perform valuable ecological roles and contribute significantly to biodiversity. Lichens in western Oregon are threatened by a number of factors including air pollution and land use practices. If we wish to maintain the persistence of lichens in future landscapes it is critical that we understand the responses of lichen communities and individual lichen species to the environment and forest structure. This dissertation explores factors that are related to differences in lichen community composition and the distributions of individual lichen species in the western Cascades of Oregon, using a large landscape scale data set. I sought to relate major gradients in lichen community composition to environmental factors, and describe differences in lichen communities with respect to forest age (Chapter 2). I found three major gradients in lichen communities at a landscape scale in the western Oregon Cascades. These gradients were related to climate as expressed by elevation and annual temperature, air quality, north-south position, the richness of epiphytic macrolichens, and forest age. I developed a rarity score, which can be used to identify hotspots of rare species diversity at a landscape scale (Chapter 3). I then built descriptive models of this rarity score to identify abiotic and biotic factors associated with the occurrence of rarity hotspots. I found that models of rarity score that used explanatory variables based on lichen community composition performed better than models that used explanatory variables based solely on environmental factors. I narrowed my focus to the level of individual species responses to the environment and forest structure by developing habitat models for 11 lichen species in the western Cascades (Chapter 4). We selected these species because they performed important ecological roles, were rare across the landscape and associated with old growth forests, or because their distributions were poorly understood. These models can be used to increase the efficiency of landscape level surveys for rare species, predict the response of these species to forest management practices, and understand factors associated with the distributions of these lichens.
Author: Eric B. Peterson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 280
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The diverse lichen flora of the Pacific Northwest is being impacted by population growth and by forest management practices. Accumulating information about our lichen flora will improve our conservation strategies. This dissertation first collects information to improve our understanding of how lichen communities vary among forests of differing structure, and across the western Oregon landscape. It then proposes a method to predict species occurrence in unsampled sites by utilizing the information on forest characters and environmental gradients at sampled sites. Macrolichen communities sampled in coniferous forests revealed that old-growth stands (>200 yrs old) harbored communities that differed from those in young forests (50-110 yrs old). Even more atypical communities occurred in macrolichen hotspots, which were primarily in riparian zones. Many macrolichen species were associated with these hotspots, including numerous nitrogen-fixing cyanolichens. Macrolichen species associated with old-growth forested plots included the nitrogen-fixing lichen Lobaria oregana and several forage-providing alectorioid lichens. The presence of remnant old trees apparently increased the occurrence of old-growth associates in young stands. The calicioids, a group of microlichens investigated only in the Cascades, had a strong association with old growth forest and remnant trees. Diversity of calicioids may also be increased by legacy structures such as old snags and wolf trees. These structures increase continuity between current and previous stands. Macrolichen communities varied between the Coast and Cascade Mountain Ranges, following climatic gradients, particularly annual precipitation. Successional patterns in macrolichen communities appeared to differ between the mountain ranges. The modeling method proposed for using habitat associations to predict occurrence has several advantages over common modeling methods, such as regression. The method is simple, avoids parametric assumptions, provides easy updating of models as additional sites are sampled, and automatically accounts for interactions among predictor variables. It can be linked with GIS data and software to map estimated probability of occurrence across landscapes. The data on calicioids from the Cascades, supplemented with additional stand inventories, were used to test and demonstrate the modeling method.
Author: John Walter Thomson
Publisher: Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Covers more than 500 species of lichens occuring on the north slope of Alaska.
Author: Robert Joseph Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Epiphytic lichens are bioindicators of climate, air quality, and other forest conditions and may reveal how forests will respond to global changes in the U.S. Pacific States of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California. We explored climate indication with lichen communities surveyed by using both the USDA Forest Service Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and Alaska Region (R10) methods. Across the Pacific States, lichen indicator species and ordination "climate scores" reflected associations between lichen community composition and climate. Indicator species are appealing targets for monitoring, while climate scores at sites resurveyed in the future can indicate climate change effects. Comparing the FIA and R10 survey methods in coastal Alaska showed that plot size affected lichen-species capture but not climate scores, whereas mixing data from both methods did not improve climate scores. Remeasurements from 1989 to 2014 in south-central and southeast Alaska revealed the importance of systematically random plot designs to detect climate responses in lichen communities. We provide an appendix of lichen species with climate indicator values. Lichen indicator species and community climate scores are promising tools for meeting regional forest management objectives.
