Download or read book Ecosystem Responses to Warming induced Plant Species Loss and Increased Nitrogen Availability in a Rocky Mountain Subalpine Meadow written by Molly Elizabeth Smith and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conservation and Ecological Restoration of Rocky Mountain Subalpine Meadows written by Adrienne Kara Shaw and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past century tree encroachment has occurred in North American subalpine meadows. Causes of tree establishment have been related to climate influences and exclusion of fire, but very few studies have looked at the consequence of tree encroachment on meadow vegetation. Within the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains, Waterton Lakes National Park and Castle Special Management Area, 14 meadows were randomly selected at wet and dry sites. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling showed that species composition changed during the transition of open meadow to forest for both wet and dry habitats. There were no significant differences in these two management areas in terms of conifer encroachment and the effects on meadow species. Results of this study show that conifer encroachment has increased over the last century with the consequences of loss in meadow species through a decrease in abundance, richness and diversity. Wet sites were significantly more sensitive to conifer encroachment than dry sites. The greatest inhibitory effects of trees on meadow vegetation within the ecotone occurred when trees were 54-72 years old for wet sites and 77-112 years old for dry sites. Ecological restoration of these meadows is important for ongoing habitat conservation, maintaining species and landscape diversity and ecosystem resilience.
Download or read book Biogeochemical Responses to Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition in Subalpine Ecosystems of the Cascades written by Justin Paul Poinsatte and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We examined the influence of snow regime on subalpine ecosystem C and N cycling at Mount Rainier under ambient conditions and in climate change scenarios. Timing of snow release influenced ecosystem C and N storage and loss. Climate change may reduce snow accumulation by up to 80% at Mount Rainier by 2050. Snowpack loss may enhance ecosystem C and N accumulation during the growing season and increase winter N leaching.
Download or read book Dissertation Abstracts International written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 960 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Climate Change and Rocky Mountain Ecosystems written by Jessica Halofsky and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the result of a team of approximately 100 scientists and resource managers who worked together for two years to understand the effects of climatic variability and change on water resources, fisheries, forest vegetation, non-forest vegetation, wildlife, recreation, cultural resources and ecosystem services. Adaptation options, both strategic and tactical, were developed for each resource area. This information is now being applied in the northern rocky Mountains to ensure long-term sustainability in resource conditions. The volume chapters provide a technical assessment of the effects of climatic variability and change on natural and cultural resources, based on best available science, including new analyses obtained through modeling and synthesis of existing data. Each chapter also contains a summary of adaptation strategies (general) and tactics (on-the-ground actions) that have been developed by science-management teams.
Download or read book Ecosystems of California written by Harold Mooney and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 1008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This long-anticipated reference and sourcebook for CaliforniaÕs remarkable ecological abundance provides an integrated assessment of each major ecosystem typeÑits distribution, structure, function, and management. A comprehensive synthesis of our knowledge about this biologically diverse state, Ecosystems of California covers the state from oceans to mountaintops using multiple lenses: past and present, flora and fauna, aquatic and terrestrial, natural and managed. Each chapter evaluates natural processes for a specific ecosystem, describes drivers of change, and discusses how that ecosystem may be altered in the future. This book also explores the drivers of CaliforniaÕs ecological patterns and the history of the stateÕs various ecosystems, outlining how the challenges of climate change and invasive species and opportunities for regulation and stewardship could potentially affect the stateÕs ecosystems. The text explicitly incorporates both human impacts and conservation and restoration efforts and shows how ecosystems support human well-being. Edited by two esteemed ecosystem ecologists and with overviews by leading experts on each ecosystem, this definitive work will be indispensable for natural resource management and conservation professionals as well as for undergraduate or graduate students of CaliforniaÕs environment and curious naturalists.
Download or read book Structure and Function of an Alpine Ecosystem written by William D. Bowman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-04-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alpine Tundra.
Download or read book Effects of CO2 and Nitrogen on Plant Response to Heat Stress written by Dan Wang and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More intense, more frequent, and longer heat-waves are expected in the future due to global warming, both of which could have dramatic ecological impacts. It is necessary to determine how elevated CO2 and N affect plant responses to heat stress because atmospheric CO2 and N deposition will increase in the future. In the first project, we found thermotolerance of Pn in elevated (vs. ambient) CO2 increased in C3, but decreased in C4 (especially) and CAM (high growth temperature only), species. In contrast, elevated CO2 decreased electron transport in 10-of-11 species. High CO2 decreased gst (stomatal conductance) in 5 of 9 species, but stomatal limitations to Pn increased during heat stress in only 2 cool-season C3 species. Thus, benefits of elevated CO2 to photosynthesis at normal temperatures may be partly offset by negative effects during stress, especially for C4 species, so effects of elevated CO2 on acute heat tolerance may contribute to future changes in plant productivity, distribution, and diversity. The second project showed that effects of elevated CO2 on plant tolerance to heat stress are also dependent on N availability. Negative effects of high CO2 were associated with decreased CE (carboxylation efficiency) and rubisco activase (except high-N barley) and HSPs (especially HSP70). My meta-analysis results showed that elevated CO2 affects plant physiology and growth to varying degrees under different temperature regimes. The field study examined the effects of N availability on plant response to heat-stress (HS) treatment in naturally-occurring vegetation. The results indicated that increasing nitrogen (N) availability will likely impact plant responses to heat stress, and thus carbon (C) sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems, which suggests that heat waves, though transient, could have significant effects on plants, communities, and ecosystem N cycling, and N can influence the effect of heat waves.
Download or read book An Ecological Characterization of Rocky Mountain Montane and Subalpine Wetlands written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Vegetation of the Rocky Mountain Region and a Comparison with that of Other Parts of the World written by Asa Gray and published by . This book was released on 1880 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Short term and Long term Changes of Vegetation Biomass in Response to Natural Soil Warming and Nitrogen Availability in a Subarctic Grassland written by Stephanie Van Loock and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, awareness of potential feedback mechanisms between global warming and primary productivity has increased. These feedbacks illustrate the importance of warming experiments, which have yielded important knowledge during the past decades. However, a thorough understanding on long-term warming effects on primary productivity and the effect of soil warming is still lacking. This study aimed to investigate short-term and long-term soil warming effects on vegetation biomass (proxy for primary productivity) and to explore the mechanisms behind the responses (direct temperature effects vs. indirect effects via warming-induced increased nitrogen (N) availability). The study took place at the ForHot research site, in the neighborhood of Hveragerði, Iceland. At this research site, subarctic grasslands on natural geothermal soil temperature gradients of different age are studied. One grassland had been warmed for approximately 8 years and was used to study short-term soil warming effects. The second grassland had been warmed for at least 50 years (probably for centuries), and was used to study long-term soil warming effects. Contrary to our expectations, soil warming decreased total vegetation biomass in both the short-term and the long-term warmed grassland. This was caused by a strong decrease of belowground biomass along the soil warming gradient in both grasslands presumably due to increased root turnover or direct temperature stress at high temperatures. Aboveground biomass was not affected by soil warming. The increasing shoot/root ratio with warming indicates that the aboveground productivity was not nutrient or water limited. Therefore, we hypothesize that the aboveground biomass was light limited, instead of temperature or nutrient limited. We conclude that long-term warming could decrease the carbon (C) sink capacity (primary production) of these northern grasslands by decreasing its belowground biomass stock if soil warming gives a reliable estimate of the effect of total ecosystem warming.
Download or read book Environmental and Adaptive Buffers that Mediate the Response of Subalpine Ecosystems to Environmental Change written by Lafe G. Conner and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This document reports the results of 4 studies of subalpine ecosystem ecology, describing ways that spatial heterogeneity in soils and plant communities mediate ecosystem responses to environmental change. Ecosystem responses to environmental change are also mediated by regional climate patterns and interannual variability in weather. In the first chapter we report the results of an experiment to test for the mediating effects of associational resistance in a forest community that experienced wide-spread beetle kill. We found that Engelmann spruce were more likely to survive a beetle outbreak when growing in low densities (host dilution) and not through other types of associational resistance that relate to higher tree-species richness or greater phylogenetic diversity of the forest community. In the second chapter we report the greater phylogenetic diversity of the forest community. In the second chapter we report the effects of early snowmelt on soil moisture in subalpine meadow and aspen communities. We found that soil organic matter, soil texture, and forest cover mediated the effects of early snowmelt and were more important drivers of growing-season soil moisture than was snow-free date. In the third chapter we report the effect of early snowmelt on growth and seed production of early-season and midsummer herbaceous species. We found that the primary effect that snowmelt timing had a plant growth was through its effect on species distribution. Changes in the timing of snowmelt resulted in warmer soil temperatures compared to neighboring snow-cover plots, and that microbial biomass and soil respiration showed no signs of a snowmelt legacy effect during the growing season. Soil organic carbon in rapid and slow-turnover pools was affected more by plant community than by snowmelt timing, and the primary drivers of soil respiration during the snow-free period were first soil organic matter and second soil temperature. Taken together, this dissertation reports our findings that subalpine ecosystems are resilient to environmental change in part because organisms in these systems are adapted to environmental conditions that are highly variable between sites, seasons, and years.
Download or read book Land Use Change and Mountain Biodiversity written by Eva M. Spehn and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-01-13 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the worldwide biodiversity program DIVERSITAS, the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment (GMBA) assesses the biological richness of high-elevation biota. GMBA's focus includes the uppermost forest regions or their substitute rangeland vegetation, the treeline ecotone, and the alpine and nival belts. Providing more than description, the GM
Download or read book Ecosystem and Plant Community Consequences of Climate Warming in a High altitude Meadow written by Mary Rebecca Shaw and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Effects of Short term and Long term Natural Soil Warming Gradients on Plant Productivity Carbon and Nitrogen Stocks of a Sub arctic Grassland written by Katherine Vande Velde and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mountain Landscapes in Transition written by Udo Schickhoff and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book compiles available knowledge of the response of mountain ecosystems to recent climate and land use change and intends to bridge the gap between science, policy and the community concerned. The chapters present key concepts, major drivers and key processes of mountain response, providing transdisciplinary orientation to mountain studies incorporating experiences of academics, community leaders and policy-makers from developed and less developed countries. The book chapters are arranged in two sections. The first section concerns the response processes of mountain environments to climate change. This section addresses climate change itself (past, current and future changes of temperature and precipitation) and its impacts on the cryosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and human-environment systems. The second section focuses on the response processes of mountain environments to land use/land cover change. The case studies address effects of changing agriculture and pastoralism, forest/water resources management and urbanization processes, landscape management, and biodiversity conservation. The book is designed as an interdisciplinary publication which critically evaluates developments in mountains of the world with contributions from both social and natural sciences.
Download or read book Mitigating Global Climate Change written by and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2024-06-26 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mountains are essential for maintaining biodiversity and providing ecosystem services. While practices such as resource exploitation in mountainous areas contribute to the well-being of human society by supplying materials, food, energy, and recreational opportunities, they also pose significant risks of ecosystem degradation. Mountain ecosystems confront numerous challenges exacerbated by climate change, particularly affecting forests, agriculture, meadows, and abandoned tailings within mountain regions. It is imperative to stay abreast of the latest advancements and understand the complexities surrounding mountain ecosystems to effectively support their management and provide guidance to people striving for ecosystem sustainability. This volume presents integrated approaches to the adaptation, evaluation, and restoration of mountain ecosystems, ensuring their sustainability and safeguarding the well-being of the communities reliant upon them.