Download or read book Plant Community Changes as Criteria of Environmental Changes written by S. Bråkenhielm and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plants and Climate Change written by Jelte Rozema and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-01-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on how climate affects or affected the biosphere and vice versa both in the present and in the past. The chapters describe how ecosystems from the Antarctic and Arctic, and from other latitudes, respond to global climate change. The papers highlight plant responses to atmospheric CO2 increase, to global warming and to increased ultraviolet-B radiation as a result of stratospheric ozone depletion.
Download or read book Plants in Changing Environments written by F. A. Bazzaz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-13 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forces of nature and human intervention lead to innumerable local, regional and sometimes global changes in plant community patterns. Regardless of the causes and the intensity of change, ecosystems are often naturally able to recover most of their attributes through natural succession. In this thoughtful and provocative new book, Fakhri Bazzaz integrates and synthesizes information on how disturbance changes the environment, how species function, coexist, and share or compete for resources in populations and communities, and how species replace each other over successional time. It illustrates how a diverse array of plant species have been used to examine fundamental questions in plant ecology by integrating physiological, population and community ecology. Graduate students and research workers in plant ecology, global change, conservation and restoration will find the perspective and analysis offered by this book an exciting contribution to the development of our understanding of plant successional change.
Download or read book Plant Communities and Their Environment written by Manuel Oliveira and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-09-09 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Plant Community and Environmental Change written by Jonathan Henn and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the forces that govern plant community structure, function, and response to change is a central question in ecology. Theory predicts that plant communities assemble as a result of a species ability to disperse, tolerate the environment, and interact with other organisms. Recently, there has been a strong focus on predicting the success of species within communities based on their ability to disperse, tolerate stress, successfully compete, and survive as measured by their phenotypic and functional characteristics, or "traits". In an era of global change, trait-based ecology offers the promise of predicting community responses without studying each species individually. The aim of my dissertation is to understand how plant traits mediate species responses to climate change, species introductions, disturbance regimes, and habitat loss and fragmentation. My first chapter describes how functional traits of native and non-native plants differ and how environmental gradients affect these differences. Theory predicts that differences in species should affect the extent to which native and non-native species compete and fill different niches, both of which can be mechanisms of invasion. I considered both intra- and interspecific variation in traits across a strong natural environmental climate gradient in Hawaii. Non-native species have different characteristics than native species overall, but these differences are minimized in cool, wet conditions. This suggests that native and non-native species compete more strongly in cool, wet conditions and that invaders in hot, dry conditions are filling different niches. My second chapter asks how ontogeny affects commonly measured plant functional traits. Using a greenhouse experiment with eight common prairie perennial plants, I measured traits every two weeks throughout the growing season to investigate how much within-species variation in phenotype is due to age alone. My findings demonstrate that plant traits do change through time with the fastest changes occurring in younger plants. As plants age, they generally shift from acquisitive resource-use strategies to conservative resource-use strategies, however, faster-growing species change more than slower-growing species. Since most trait-based studies rely on functional traits measured from adult plants, my results suggest that it may be important to also incorporate traits of younger individuals, especially when evaluating assembling communities. My third chapter investigates plant strategies for early spring survival and growth following disturbance by fire in tallgrass prairie. I measured cold tolerance and specific leaf area (leaf carbon content) as metrics of stress tolerance and leaf area as a metric of growth to determine how plant strategies change through time and whether there are tradeoffs between growth and tolerance. Disturbance timing affects tolerance traits such that fall burns promote more tolerant leaves early in the spring while spring burns promote more tolerant leaves late in the season. There is weak evidence for a tradeoff where increased tolerance results in a reduction in growth. Overall, these results suggest that plants exhibit strategies for spring survival and growth that vary from cold avoidance with rapid growth to cold tolerance with slower growth. My fourth chapter explores how disturbance and winter climate change interact to affect prairie plant growth, phenology, and community composition. I established a three-year field experiment that manipulates fire timing and winter snow depth in restored prairies. Plots that have reduced snow and that are burned in the fall have substantially colder winter soil temperatures and thaw earlier in spring. The disturbance treatments change the magnitude and direction of response to snow depth treatments for most species and have species-specific effects on plant growth and phenology. These results provide clear evidence that disturbance regimes can set the stage for climate change responses in grassland plant communities.
Download or read book Processes of Vegetation Change written by C.J. Burrows and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about ideas on the nature and causes of temporal change in the species composition of vegetation. In particular it examines the diverse processes of inter action of plants with their environment, and with one another, through which the species composition of vegetation becomes established. The first chapter considers the general nature of vegetation and the ways in which vegetation change is perceived by ecologists. Chapters 2 and 3 provide essential background about the relationships between plants and their abiotic and biotic environment. Anyone who is familiar with the fundamentals of plant ecology may prefer to pass over Chapters 2 and 3 which, of necessity, cover their subject matter very briefly. Sequences of development of vegetation on new volcanic rocks, sand dunes and glacial deposits, respectively, are outlined in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Chapter 7 is about the patterns of vegetation change which occur in severe habitats around the world, and Chapter 8 discusses wetlands. Chapter 9 discusses the diverse responses of temperate forests to a variety of disturbing influences, and Chapter 10 deals with change in the species-rich forests of the Tropics. Chapter 11 treats, in detail, the empirical and inferential data on the biological processes occurring during vegetation change sequences. Chapter 12 considers the plant community phenomena which are implicated in the development of theory about vegetation change. The final chapter, Chapter 13, draws the diverse themes together into a unified theoretical structure by which the vegetation change phenomena may be understood.
Download or read book The Study of Plant Communities written by Henry John Oosting and published by . This book was released on 1956 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resource added for the Landscape Horticulture Technician program 100014.
Download or read book Changes in the Environment Implications on Vegetation written by Bhupinder Dhir and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plant Population Dynamics Under Climate Change written by Robin Roxanne Decker and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate-driven environmental changes influence the spatial spread, persistence, and community dynamics of plant populations. Ecological theory has focused on determining which populations will persist and spread in response to these changes and how they will do so. I build on this theory by investigating how climate change affects the mechanisms that influence the spread of invasions, how structured plant populations keep pace with climate change, and if communities of native plants can recover after a biological invasion in the face of climate change. First, I develop a spatial population model to investigate how climate change affects the spread of ecosystem engineers, which are organisms that change the availability of resources in their environment. I apply this model to salt marsh grasses, which engineer their environment by increasing marsh elevation via sediment accumulation. I find that climate-driven sea-level rise reverses the conditions that promote the spread of these ecosystem engineers. Next, I develop a spatial model of a stage-structured plant population, which shifts in response to climate change. I use this model to determine if older trees left behind when the habitat shifts play any ecological role in the population. I find that these zombie forests are critical to the persistence of the population, dispersing seeds into the core population as it moves. Finally, I investigate how a series of extreme climate events, including drought, fire, and extreme precipitation, affect the ability of native plant communities to recover after removal of an invasive species. Analyzing seven years of field data, I find that the recovery of native plant communities after invader removal is resilient to major climate perturbations. Together, these studies identify conditions and mechanisms that limit the spread of plant invasions and promote the persistence of vulnerable plant populations in the face of climate change.
Download or read book Plant Population Responses to Environmental Change and the Role of Biotic Interactions Along Environmental Gradients written by S. W. Doxford and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental conditions drive the occurrence and growth of plant populations as well as the structure and composition of plant communities. Plant responses to change in their environment are the net outcome of species-specific life histories, biotic interactions and habitat requirements. Recently global climate change has increased the need to understand the relative importance of these processes in predicting risks of extinction within existing communities and invasion by alien species. Changes in the extent and limits of a species range are a typical response to environmental change. Large-scale distribution shifts are the outcome of colonisation and extinction linked to the performance of plants in local populations. Competition and facilitation between plants act in combination with environmental factors to determine plant performance and population growth at this scale. Changes in climate or habitat variables are also likely to have direct effects of on many life-history traits in plants affecting physiology, phenology and fitness. Here historical distribution records from two time periods are used to provide a long-term perspective on distribution change. I consider the evidence for contrasting models of distribution change in the British flora and find that the spread and dispersal of most species is spatially restricted, likely as a result of habitat constraints. There is also evidence of climate effects on distribution change for many of the species studied. The roles of competition and facilitation along environmental gradients are assessed in winter annuals in sand dunes. Plant-bryophyte and plant-plant interactions are studied using removal experiments across multiple years. The results show that there may be spatio-temporal variation in the strength and direction of interactions in consecutive years. There also species and population-specific responses to experimental temperature increase in annuals, which take the form of plasticity and adaptation depending on the traits measured. Temporal variability may be equally, or more, crucial to the performance and growth of annuals than the role of spatial gradients in environmental quality.
Download or read book Environmental Standards written by Christian Streffer and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-29 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid growth of the world population - nearly six-fold over the last hundred years - combined with the rising number of technical installations especially in the industrialized countries has lead to ever tighter and more strained living spaces on our planet. Because ofthe inevitable processes oflife, man was at first an exploiter rather than a careful preserver of the environment. Environmental awareness with the intention to conserve the environment has grown only in the last few decades. Environmental standards have been defined and limit values have been set largely guided, however, by scientific and medical data on single exposures, while public opinion, on the other hand, now increasingly calls for astronger consideration of the more complex situations following combined exposures. Furthermore, it turned out that environmental standards, while necessarily based on scientific data, must also take into account ethical, legal, economic, and sociological aspects. A task of such complexity can only be dealt with appropriately in the framework of an inter disciplinary group.
Download or read book Developing criteria and indicators of community managed forests as assessment and learning tools objectives methodologies and results written by Nicolette Burford de Oliveira and published by CIFOR. This book was released on 2000 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report explores criteria and indicators (C&I) for monitoring and assessing the sustainability of community managed forests (CMFs), and offers some insights into methodological tools and conceptual approaches for C&I development. The research was intended to explore the potential value of C&I to forest communities, their partners and their representative organisations to legitimise and enhance management, including strengthening of control over forest resources and facilitating the equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of forest management. The C&I for CMF tests involved six forest communities and their partners in Central Province, Cameroon, the Amazonian state of Pará, Brazil, and West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Each test was of approximately one-month duration. The core teams included an ecologist, a social scientist and a forest management specialist. Local involvement was an essential element of the research process. Facilitators enabled the active participation of community members in the critical appraisal of the C&I. After each field test, academics, policy makers, representatives of local and national non-governmental organisations, and representatives of other forest communities reviewed the emergent ‘draft’ C&I. Over 750 statements of principles, criteria, indicators and verifiers were generated by the tests. There is an evaluation of C&I testing processes and C&I for CMF development methodologies, as well as an analysis of the C&I for CMF. The comprehensive coverage of issues related to the sustainability of CMFs makes this report a valuable reference for those interested in implementing C&I for CMF, and for other users and purposes. These may include: researchers or policy makers analysing intersectoral impacts on CMFs; practitioners assessing and developing collaborative CMF initiatives; development planners and project managers evaluating or planning initiatives; and professors seeking guidance on incorporating community forestry into curricula for rural development, forestry and anthropology students.
Download or read book Positive Plant Interactions and Community Dynamics written by Francisco Pugnaire and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the concept of the "struggle for life" became the heart of Darwin's theory of evolution, biologists have studied the relevance of interactions for the natural history and evolution of organisms. Although positive interactions among plants have traditionally received little attention, there is now a growing body of evidence showing the ef
Download or read book Vegetation Dynamics Global Change written by Allen M. Solomon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the summer of 1987, a series of discussions I was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (nASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, to plan a study of global vegetation change. The work was aimed at promoting the Interna tional Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), sponsored by the International Council of Scientific Unions (lCSU), of which nASA is a member. Our study was designed to provide initial guidance in the choice of approaches, data sets and objectives for constructing global models of the terrestrial biosphere. We hoped to provide substantive and concrete assistance in formulating the working plans of IGBP by involving program planners in the development and application of models which were assembled from available data sets and modeling ap proaches. Recent acceptance of the "nASA model" as the starting point for endeavors of the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems Core Project of the IGBP suggests we were successful in that aim. The objective was implemented by our initiation of a mathematical model of global vegetation, including agriculture, as defined by the forces which control and change vegetation. The model was to illustrate the geographical consequences to vegetation structure and functioning of changing climate and land use, based on plant responses to environmental variables. The completed model was also expected to be useful for examining international environmental policy responses to global change, as well as for studying the validity of IIASA's experimental approaches to environmental policy development.
Download or read book Consumer Control of Plant Communities in Current and Future Environments written by Halton Adrian Peters and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Plant Growth and Climate Change written by James I. L. Morison and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evidence grows daily of the changing climate and its impact on plants and animals. Plant function is inextricably linked to climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. On the shortest and smallest scales, the climate affects the plant’s immediate environment and so directly influences physiological processes. At larger scales, the climate influences species distribution and community composition, as well as the viability of different crops in managed ecosystems. Plant growth also influences the local, regional and global climate, through the exchanges of energy and gases between the plants and the air around them. Plant Growth and Climate Change examines the major aspects of how anthropogenic climate change affects plants, focusing on several key determinants of plant growth: atmospheric CO2, temperature, water availability and the interactions between these factors. The book demonstrates the variety of techniques used across plant science: detailed physiology in controlled environments; observational studies based on long-term data sets; field manipulation experiments and modelling. It is directed at advanced-level university students, researchers and professionals across the range of plant science disciplines, including plant physiology, plant ecology and crop science. It will also be of interest to earth system scientists.
Download or read book Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change written by Lindsey Gillson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how a knowledge of long-term change in ecosystems can inform and influence their conservation, integrating perspectives from archaeology, environmental history and palaeoecology.
