Treesearch

The 2014 Farm Bill reduces conservation program spending by $6 billion—the first decrease in conservation funding by a Farm Bill since the inclusion of conservation incentives in 1985. These funding cuts will impact habitat enhancement on private lands, typically accomplished through Farm Bill incentive programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP). CRP lands alone will shrink from 32 million acres in the previous Farm Bill to 24 million acres by 2017 (NWF 2014). So the question becomes: What other options can produce economic...

Tandem repeats (TRs) extensively exist in the genomes of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Based on the sequenced genomes and gene annotations of 31 plant and algal species in Phytozome version 8.0 (http://www.phytozome.net/), we examined TRs in a genome-wide scale, characterized their distributions and motif features, and explored their putative biological functions. Among the 31 species, no significant correlation was detected between the TR density and genome size. Interestingly, green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (42,059 bp/Mbp) and castor bean Ricinus communis (55,454 bp/Mbp) showed much...

The study of the diversity of multivariate objects shares common characteristics and goals across disciplines, including ecology and organizational management. Nevertheless, subject-matter experts have adopted somewhat separate diversity concepts and analysis techniques, limiting the potential for sharing and comparing across disciplines. Moreover, while large and complex diversity data may benefit from exploratory data analysis, most of the existing techniques emphasize confirmatory analysis based on statistical metrics and models. This work aims to bridge these gaps. First, by cross...

Geographically isolated populations of endangered species such as the Mount Graham red squirrel (MGRS) (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis) are particularly sensitive to fluctuations in habitat quality and extent. In recent decades a series of insect outbreaks and high-severity fires degraded the sole MGRS habitat in the Pinaleño Mountains of southeast Arizona, and have raised concerns about the long-term viability of the species. In this study we use dendrochological and spatial analysis methods to reconstruct the history of MGRS habitat size and quality over the past three centuries to...

We explored forecasting of county roundwood pulpwood produc-tion with county-vector autoregressive (CVAR) and spatial panelvector autoregressive (SPVAR) methods. The analysis used timberproducts output data for the state of Florida, together with a set ofmacro-economic variables. Overall, we found the SPVAR specifica-tion produced forecasts with lower error rates compared to CVARspecifications. Nonetheless, high forecast errors across countiesrevealed the uncertainty associated with projecting volumes ofcounty pulpwood production.Published by Elsevier GmbH. on behalf of Department of...