Plant Species and Functional Diversity Across Gradients of Resource Availability and Grazing in a California Serpentine Grassland PDF Download
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Author: Leslie Marie Gonzalez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grassland ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Author: Leslie Marie Gonzalez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grassland ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Author: Susan Harrison
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520948459
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 461
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Book Description
Serpentine soils have long fascinated biologists for the specialized floras they support and the challenges they pose to plant survival and growth. This volume focuses on what scientists have learned about major questions in earth history, evolution, ecology, conservation, and restoration from the study of serpentine areas, especially in California. Results from molecular studies offer insight into evolutionary patterns, while new ecological research examines both species and communities. Serpentine highlights research whose breadth provides context and fresh insights into the evolution and ecology of stressful environments.
Author: Mark R. Stromberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520252209
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
"This highly synthetic and scholarly work brings together new and important scientific contributions by leading experts on a rich diversity of topics concerning the history, ecology, and conservation of California's endangered grasslands. The editors and authors have succeeded admirably in drawing from a great wealth of recent research to produce a widely accessible and compelling, state-of-the-art treatment of this fascinating subject. Anyone interested in Californian biodiversity or grassland ecosystems in general will find this book to be an invaluable resource and a major inspiration for further research, management, and restoration efforts."—Bruce G. Baldwin, W. L. Jepson Professor and Curator, UC Berkeley "Grasses and grasslands are among the most important elements of the California landscape. This is their book, embodying the kind of integrated view needed for all ecological communities in California. Approaches ranging across an incredibly broad spectrum -- paleontology and human history; basic science and practical management techniques; systematics, community ecology, physiology, and genetics; physical factors such as water, soil nutrients, atmospherics, and fire; biological factors such as competition, symbiosis, and grazing -- are nicely tied together due to careful editorial work. This is an indispensable reference for everyone interested in the California environment."—Brent Mishler, Director of the University & Jepson Herbaria and Professor of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley "The structure and function of California grasslands have intrigued ecologists for decades. The editors of this volume have assembled a comprehensive set of reviews by a group of outstanding authors on the natural history, structure, management, and restoration of this economically and ecologically important ecosystem."—Scott L. Collins, Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico
Author: Sarah Claire Elmendorf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Author: L.F. Huenneke
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400931131
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
The chapters in this volume are based on a opportumtles for studying the links between symposium, "California grasslands: structure abiotic and biotic components. and productivity", supported by the National The contributions in this volume illustrate Science Foundation. The primary objective of the links between population-level processes this symposium was to integrate the current and system-level phenomena in a well-studied understanding of controls on ecosystem struc community. Unfortunately, some areas of cur ture and function with the approaches of popu rent research (e.g., nutrient cycling) are under lation biology. The annual grasslands are represented in this volume. For other topics eminently suitable for experimental and manip (particularly the role of invertebrate con sumers), the lack of data from the annual grass ulative studies of ecosystem processes. The short lives and small stature of the component land brought a broader grassland perspective. plant species make experimental work far more Together, however, the contributions illustrate practical than in forests or even in perennial the importance of different ecological ap dominated prairies. The system's small-scale proaches in studying the controls on structure patchiness, and the obvious importance of and function of a complex system. the region's mediterranean climate in the life cycle of the annual vegetation, afford many L.F. Huenneke and H.A. Mooney Huenneke, L.F. and Mooney, H. (eds) Grassland Structure and Function: California Annual Grassland.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
"Education, arts and social sciences, natural and technical sciences in the United States and Canada".
Author: Arthur R. Kruckeberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520915725
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive treatment of an important segment of the flora of California: native plants that have varying degrees of fidelity to serpentine rock and soil that make up over 1100 square miles in the Coast Ranges and the Sierra Nevada. Many of California's unique endemic plants are found nowhere else but on serpentine; over 200 species, subspecies, and varieties of native plants are restricted to some degree to serpentine. The author describes the geology, soils, and mineral nutrition of serpentines (low in normal essential nutrients, high in magnesium, iron, and toxic heavy metals, nickel, and chromium), the vegetation and flora that tolerate this inhospitable habitat, the fauna on serpentines, and management/conservation problems associated with serpentines. This is an essential guide to an important aspect of the flora of California.
Author: Jae R. Pasari
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
Author: Claudia J. Garnica-Díaz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Altitudes
Languages : en
Pages : 59
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Book Description
Mountains are model systems for understanding the mechanisms that underlie patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem function. This study disentangles the effects of climatic and edaphic properties on patterns of trait variation across two mountains, tests foundational assumptions of trait-based approaches, and tests the stress dominance hypothesis of decreasing trait variation with increasing environmental stress. The results suggest that elevation as a proxy of abiotic conditions is not enough to generalize the variability of plant strategies across mountains. The ability to distinguish trait variation in different environments depends on the type of trait used, due to variable strength of trait-environment relationships. These results suggest that trait-environment relationships may vary in predictable ways across environmental gradients. Even though serpentine plant communities were more functionally dispersed compared to volcanic communities (contrary to the stress dominance hypothesis), this can be explained by complex interactions between climatic and edaphic properties.
Author: Lauren Margaret Hallett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 63
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Book Description
Global circulation models consistently forecast an increase in the frequency of extreme events such as severe storms and droughts. These changes will alter species interactions and ecosystem functions shaped by precipitation, such as productivity. Ecosystem management will need to anticipate, and where possible, mitigate the effects of increased climate variability in order to maintain ecosystem services and biodiversity. This is a pressing issue for California rangelands, which host a high percentage of California's endemic plants and support a large ranching industry that depends on reliable forage production. My dissertation uses observational and experimental approaches to understand the implications of increased precipitation variability for the stability of forage production (i.e. aboveground productivity) and the persistence of rare species in California rangelands. Chapter 1 explores how species interactions affect the stability of aboveground productivity and whether these patterns change along precipitation gradients. I compiled and analyzed nine long-term datasets of plant species composition and aboveground productivity from grassland sites across the United States. I found that productivity in mesic grasslands was stabilized by species richness, whereas productivity in climatically variable grasslands was stabilized by species asynchrony over time. The latter pattern was exemplified by California rangelands, which experienced the most variable precipitation as well as exhibited the most species asynchrony. Chapters 2 and 3 experimentally test the relationship between precipitation variability and species asynchrony in California rangelands and its implications for the stability of cover and aboveground productivity over time. In Chapter 2, I used rainout shelters and irrigation to experimentally create dry and wet conditions, which I replicated across areas with both low and moderate grazing histories. In moderately grazed areas, my rainfall treatments generated a classic pattern of "grass years" in wet conditions and "forb years" in dry. This pattern helped to stabilize cover across rainfall treatments and is a likely reason for the relationship between precipitation variability and species asynchrony that I observed in Chapter 1. In low grazed areas, however, my treatments essentially generated "grass years" in wet conditions and "no-grass years" in dry; forb cover was both low and unresponsive to rainfall in these areas. This suggests that moderate grazing may be an important management tool to maintain the functional responsiveness of California rangelands to precipitation variability. Chapter 3 tests whether competitive and functional differences between grasses and forbs affect the degree to which asynchrony stabilizes total biomass production. Within wet and dry plots I manipulated species interactions to create monocultures of Avena barbata (the most abundant grass), Erodium botrys (the most abundant forb) and a mixture of Avena and Erodium. I found that Avena exerted a stronger competitive effect on Erodium under wet conditions relative to dry, which should help stabilize community productivity. However, this effect was overwhelmed by highly unequal production capacity between the two species; Erodium productivity was much lower than Avena and, consequently, tradeoffs between the species did not increase the stability of the mixture relative to either monoculture. Chapter 4 further investigates tradeoffs between grass and forb years, but in the context of species population dynamics in a ecosystem of conservation concern. Serpentine grassland patches in California host a unique, predominately native flora that is threatened by non-native grass invasion. I focused on a serpentine site that over the past 32 years has exhibited high fluctuations in native forb abundances, and has experienced a series of invasions and subsequent recessions by a non-native annual grass, Bromus hordeaceus. Effective native species conservation and invasive species management require an understanding of what drives such variation in species abundances. I applied a population model to the six most-abundant species at the site - four native annual forbs, a native annual grass and Bromus - to test factors affecting their population size and stability. I found that species could have large population sizes (measured as mean abundance over time) for different reasons - three species had high intrinsic growth rates, whereas the other three, including Bromus and the native grass, had minimal self-limitation. Population stability was highly affected by these differences: species with both low intrinsic growth rates and minimal self-limitation had less stable populations and were more sensitive to rainfall. These findings suggest a framework to describe population stability and to identify which species are likely to be sensitive to environmental change.
