Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities

Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description

Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities

Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities

Quantifying Environmental Responses of Terrestrial Plant Communities PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Quantifying the Effects of Spatial Environmental Variation and Soil Microbes on Plant Community Dynamics

Quantifying the Effects of Spatial Environmental Variation and Soil Microbes on Plant Community Dynamics PDF Author: Gaurav Sunil Kandlikar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Understanding the processes that determine the diversity and dynamics of plant communities is a longstanding challenge in ecology. Many studies have inferred the role of demographic processes by studying patterns of functional trait variation in natural communities, but studies explicitly linking such functional trait differences to demographic processes are lacking. There has also been a growing realization that the dynamics of plant communities are also influenced by the composition of the soil microbial community, but despite hundreds of empirical studies, predicting the influence of soil microbes on the diversity and dynamics of natural plant communities remains a challenge. In my dissertation I couple ecological theory with field and greenhouse experiments to build a more complete and generalizable understanding of the processes that control plant biodiversity. In Chapter One, I ask whether community-wide shifts in three key plant functional traits across an environmental gradient reflect variation in the trait-performance relationship across the landscape. To address this question I coupled observational data of variation in plant composition and functional with experimental data on species performance across the same landscape. I asked whether observed trait-environment interactions in the experimental data match observed patterns of trait variation. I found that shifts in community-weighted mean traits generally reflect the direction of trait-environment interactions. But on the whole, the interactions we found were weak, and by themselves might not be sufficient to explain community-wide shifts. This supports the value of plant functional traits for predicting species responses to environmental variation, and highlights a need for more detailed evaluation of how trait-performance relationships change across environments to improve such predictions. Chapters Two and Three focus on how soil microbes can influence diversity in plant communities. Chapter Two begins with a re-analysis of a classic framework that has been extensively used to study how feedbacks between plants and soil microbes can influence species coexistence. A great deal of existing theoretical and empirical work has shown that soil microbes can promote plant coexistence when they generate stabilizing feedback loops, or can drive exclusion when they generate destabilizing feedback loops. I applied insights from modern coexistence theory to show that existing work has largely neglected another avenue by which plant-soil feedbacks can mediate plant coexistence, by driving average fitness differences between plants. This chapter also extends classic models of plant-soil feedback to include more biological detail to show how the effects of plant-soil feedback on plant coexistence depends critically on how plants interact with each other through other processes like resource competition. In the final chapter of my dissertation, I applied the insights from Chapter Two to ask how plant-soil feedbacks influence diversity in southern California annual grassland communities. I conducted a greenhouse experiment to quantify microbially mediated stabilization and fitness differences among fifteen pairs of annual plants. We found that soil microbes frequently generate negative frequency-dependent dynamics that stabilize plant interactions, but they simultaneously generate large average fitness differences between species. The net result is that if the plant species are otherwise competitively equivalent, soil microbes would often drive exclusion among the focal species. This work illustrates the importance of quantifying microbially mediated fitness differences, and points to important avenues for future studies on how soil microbes shape plant diversity.

Measuring and Monitoring Plant Populations

Measuring and Monitoring Plant Populations PDF Author: Caryl Elzinga
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781505683066
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
This technical reference applies to monitoring situations involving a single plant species, such as an indicator species, key species, or weed. It was originally developed for monitoring special status plants, which have some recognized status at the Federal, State, or agency level because of their rarity or vulnerability. Most examples and discussions in this technical reference focus on these special status species, but the methods described are also applicable to any single-species monitoring and even some community monitoring situations.We thus hope wildlife biologists, range conservationists, botanists, and ecologists will all find this technical reference helpful.

Plant Communities and Their Environment

Plant Communities and Their Environment PDF Author: Manuel Oliveira
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1789853370
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book presents different perspectives on how to understand the complex interaction between plants and the environment. Plant communities adapt to biotic and abiotic stresses with different mechanisms and understanding these phenomena provides the means to better manage our environment and to cultivate crops that better serve our needs.

Responses of Submersed Vascular Plant Communities to Environmental Change, Summary

Responses of Submersed Vascular Plant Communities to Environmental Change, Summary PDF Author: Graham J. Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Aquatic plants
Languages : en
Pages : 22

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Book Description


New Frontiers in Plant-Environment Interactions

New Frontiers in Plant-Environment Interactions PDF Author: Tariq Aftab
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783031437281
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book provides information about plant–environment studies and challenges for plant improvement to achieve food security. Plants face a wide range of environmental challenges, which are expected to become more intense as a result of global climate change. Plant–environment interactions play an important role in the functioning of ecosystems. There are habitats throughout the world that present challenges to crop plants, such as through a lack of water and excessive, or toxic, salts in the soil. Soil properties represent a strong selection pressure for plant diversity and influence the structure of plant communities and participate to the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. Plant communities selected by environment grow by modifying soil physical, chemical, and biological properties, with consequent effects on survival and growth of plants. The complexity of plant–environment interactions has recently been studied by developing a trait-based approach in which responses and effects of plants on environment were quantified and modeled. This fundamental research on plant–environment interaction in ecosystems is essential to transpose knowledges of functional ecology to environmental management. Plants have adapted to an incredible range of environment, and extensive researches on ecological and environmental plant physiology have provided mechanistic understanding of the survival, distribution, productivity, and abundance of plant species across the diverse climates of our planet. Ecophysiological techniques have greatly advanced our understanding of photosynthesis, respiration, plant water relations, and plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses, from instantaneous to evolutionary timescales. Ecophysiological studies also provide the basis for scaling plant physiological processes from the tissue to the canopy, ecosystem, region, and to a large extent, the entire globe. Given the above, the author proposes to bring forth a comprehensive book, “New Frontiers in Plant-Environment Interactions”, highlighting the various emerging techniques and applications that are currently being used in plant–environment interaction research and its future prospects. The author is sure that this book caters the need of all those who are working or have interest in the above topic.

Monitoring Plant and Animal Populations

Monitoring Plant and Animal Populations PDF Author: Caryl L. Elzinga
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 063204442X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Monitoring Plant and Animal Populations offers an overview of population monitoring issues that is accessible to the typical field biologist and land managers with a modest statistical background. The text includes concrete guidelines for ecologists to follow to design a statistically defensible monitoring program. User-friendly, practical guide, written in a highly readable format. The authors provide an interdisciplinary scope to address the current, widespread interest in monitoring in many environmental fields, including pure and applied ecology, conservation biology, and wildlife management. Emphasizes the role of monitoring in adaptive management. Defines important terminology and contrasts monitoring with other data-collection activities. Covers the applicable principles of sampling and shows how to design a monitoring project. Provides a step-by-step overview of the monitoring process, illustrated by flow charts and references. The authors also offer guidelines for analyzing and interpreting monitoring data. Illustrates the foundation of management objectives and describes their components, types, and development. Describes common field techniques for measuring important attributes of animal and plant populations. Reviews different methods for recording monitoring data in the field, managing the data, and communicating data to policy makers.

The Nature of Plant Communities

The Nature of Plant Communities PDF Author: J. Bastow Wilson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110848221X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
Provides a comprehensive review of the role of species interactions in the process of plant community assembly.

Measurements for Terrestrial Vegetation

Measurements for Terrestrial Vegetation PDF Author: Charles D. Bonham
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780470972588
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Measurements for Terrestrial Vegetation, 2nd Edition presents up-to-date methods for analyzing species frequency, plant cover, density and biomass data. Each method is presented in detail with a full discussion of its strengths and weaknesses from field applications through statistical characteristics of bias and use of the correct probability distribution to describe and analyze data. This practical book also covers the use of satellite imagery to obtain measurement data on cover, density and biomass. Field data collection includes current applications of statistical sampling and analysis designs that should be used to obtain and analyze these data. This new and thoroughly updated edition of a classic text will be essential reading for everyone involved in measuring and assessing vegetation and plant biomass, including researchers and practitioners in vegetation science, plant ecology, forestry, global change scientists and conservation scientists. Provides a comprehensive catalogue of sampling, surveying and measuring techniques in vegetation science Updated to include new technologies and developments in the field New coverage of prediction models for large areas, including satellite mapping and remote sensing techniques Includes up-to-date applications of statistical sampling and analysis designs used to obtain and analyse data Reviews the strengths and weaknesses of each technique, allowing an informed choice of alternative approaches Clear diagrams to explain best-practice in methodology The companion website for this book can be found at www.wiley.com/go/bonham/measurements