Treesearch

Alaska Natives have experienced less than ideal conditions for engaging in management of their homeland commons. During the first 100 years after the Treaty of Cession of 1867, Alaska Natives received limited recognition by the United States. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon after tedious negotiations by Alaska Natives, the United States Congress, and special interest groups. As part of the settlement, 12 regional corporations and over 200 village corporations were established to receive fee title to 40 million acres of...

Leslie A. Viereck passed away at age 78 on 31 August 2008 in Fairbanks, Alaska. At the time of his death Les's knowledge and understanding of the vegetation of Alaska was second to none: he is sorely missed. His introduction to Alaska occurred during the summer of 1948 while he was still an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. He completed his graduate work (M.S. and Ph.D.) at the University of Colorado under the direction William A. Weber, the pre-eminent Colorado botanist, and John W. Marr, the founder and first Director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. For his doctoral...

The major challenge to stewardship of protected areas is to decide where, when, and how to intervene in physical and biological processes, to conserve what we value in these places. To make such decisions, planners and managers must articulate more clearly the purposes of parks, what is valued, and what needs to be sustained. A key aim for conservation today is the maintenance and restoration of biodiversity, but a broader range of values are also likely to be considered important, including ecological integrity, resilience, historical fidelity (i.e., the ecosystem appears and functions...

Five models for the consumption of coarse woody debris or woody fuels with a diameter larger than 0.6 cm were assessed for application in Australian southern eucalypt forest fires including: CONSUME models for (1) activity fuels, (2) natural western woody and (3) natural southern woody fuels, (4) the BURNUP model and (5) the recommendation by the Australian National Carbon Accounting System which assumes 50% woody fuel consumption. These models were assessed using field data collected as part of the woody fuel consumption project (WFCP) in south-west Western Australia and northern-central...

We studied responses of Columbian white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus leucurus) to cattle and sheep in western Oregon because of viability concerns. We used radio-telemetry, observations from horseback, and searches with a trained dog to determine fawning habitat, dam home ranges, and habitat use by fawns. Dams shifted their center of activity by establishing disjunct areas of use prior to fawning. Ten dams exhibited their largest Euclidian movement during May-July; 7 females undertook extended forays during spring. Three natal sites averaged 1926 m from the center of the dam's...

Recent work suggests that moose (Alces alces [L., 1758]) in the boreal ecoregion may be nutritionally limited by the availability of protein as a consequence of both low nitrogen (N) concentrations and high tannin levels in their principal foods. However, the ability of moose to digest protein in the presence of tannins is unknown. We undertook a series of digestion trials with captive moose to quantify the effects of tannins and compare the digestive capabilities of moose to other browsing cervids. We fed four moose 14 single-species diets including 10 native tannin-containing forages and...

Jim Gerdemann died peacefully of natural causes on December 19, 2008, at the age of 87. Janice, his wife of nearly 60 y, was at his hospital bedside in Newport, Oregon. He was a pioneer in the modern taxonomy of Glomeromycota, a world recognized authority on arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM), and a revered teacher.

Kalapuya is described as a new, monotypic truffle genus in the Morchellaceae known only from the Pacific northwestern United States. Its relationship to other hypogeous genera within Morchellaceae is explored by phylogenetic analysis of the ribosomal LSU and EFlα protein coding region. The type species, K. brunnea, occurs in Douglas-fir forests up to about 50 y old on the west slope of the Cascade Range in Oregon and in the Coastal Ranges of Oregon and northern California. It has a roughened, warty, reddish brown to brown peridium, a solid whitish gleba that develops grayish brown mottling...

The carbon isotopic composition (δ13C) of recently assimilated plant carbon is known to depend on water-stress, caused either by low soil moisture or by low atmospheric humidity. Air humidity has also been shown to correlate with the δ13C of soil respiration, which suggests indirectly that recently fixed photosynthates comprise a substantial component of substrates consumed by soil respiration. However, there are other reasons why the δ13CO2 of soil efflux may change with moisture conditions, which have not received as much attention. Using a combination of greenhouse experiments and...

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program began in 1980 with the mission of addressing long-term ecological phenomena through research at individual sites, as well as comparative and synthetic activities among sites. We applied network science measures to assess how the LTER program has achieved its mission using intersite publications as the measure of collaboration. As it grew, the LTER program evolved from (a) a collection of independent sites (1981-1984) to (b) multiple ephemerally connected groupings with a gradual increase in collaboration (1985 to about 1998) to (c) a...