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Paul Beier

Small aspen stands are disappearing from the landscape in the Southwest, so it is important to understand their contribution to the avian community. We sampled birds in 53 small, isolated aspen stands and 53 paired plots within the ponderosa pine forest in northern Arizona, during the 1996 and 1997 breeding seasons. Bird species richness and abundance were higher in aspen than in pine. However, bird species richness and abundance did not vary with size of the aspen patch or isolation index. In addition, direct ordination of species distributions with habitat factors suggested no distinct avian communities. This suggests that aspen stands do not harbor separate populations, but rather are locations where the regional...
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Enduring features (EFs; geophysical settings) are worthy conservation targets. We assembled data on EFs for the nation and performed an ecoregion-based GAP Analysis on their conservation status. Ecoregions that circumscribe mountains tend to have more EFs, and ecoregions in the west, where public lands make up more of the total land area, have more EFs within conservation lands. The middle of the country is relatively low in EF diversity, but nonetheless the number of EFs in conservation lands is low. Areas of high EF diversity in the Edwards Plateau also contained a diversity of rare species occurrences. We generated a new EF data set for the eastern USA and evaluated the distribution of rare species in terms of...
Categories: Data; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: Completed, Data.gov Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, Data.gov Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, Data.gov Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, Data.gov Landscape Conservation Cooperative Network, All tags...
Significant efforts are underway to translate improved understanding of how climate change is altering ecosystems into practical actions for sustaining ecosystem functions and benefits. We explore this transition in California, where adaptation and mitigation are advancing relatively rapidly, through four case studies that span large spatial domains and encompass diverse ecological systems, institutions, ownerships, and policies. The case studies demonstrate the context specificity of societal efforts to adapt ecosystems to climate change and involve applications of diverse scientific tools (e.g., scenario analyses, downscaled climate projections, ecological and connectivity models) tailored to specific planning...
Enduring features (EFs; geophysical settings) are worthy conservation targets. We assembled data on EFs for the nation and performed an ecoregion-based GAP Analysis on their conservation status. Ecoregions that circumscribe mountains tend to have more EFs, and ecoregions in the west, where public lands make up more of the total land area, have more EFs within conservation lands. The middle of the country is relatively low in EF diversity, but nonetheless the number of EFs in conservation lands is low. Areas of high EF diversity in the Edwards Plateau also contained a diversity of rare species occurrences. We generated a new EF data set for the eastern USA and evaluated the distribution of rare species in terms of...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cobi.12503/abstract): Geodiversity has been used as a surrogate for biodiversity when species locations are unknown, and this utility can be extended to situations where species locations are in flux. Recently, scientists have designed conservation networks that aim to explicitly represent the range of geophysical environments, identifying a network of physical stages that could sustain biodiversity while allowing for change in species composition in response to climate change. Because there is no standard approach to designing such networks, we compiled 8 case studies illustrating a variety of ways scientists have approached the challenge. These studies...
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