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From islands with no permanent flowing streams to those with navigable inland waters, the insular Caribbean contains a great range of conditions regarding the access to freshwater resources. Because of the variation in topography and size, the ability of islands to retain freshwater also varies widely. The usage of freshwater in this region is being led by two major drivers: (1) the demands of basic water needs from an increasing urban population, and (2) those of tourism-based economies that demand water for recreation and aesthetic uses. Formal and informal freshwater management and...

Ecological restoration incorporates land management principles and activities aimed at returning a damaged or degraded ecosystem back to a key historic trajectory in order to achieve goals of ecosystem health, integrity, and sustainability. In the United States, many restorationists look to ecological conditions present before the time of European settlement as the key historic landscape they are seeking to restore, and employ an approach to restoration management that has been called "classical ecological restoration".

Rapid changes in climate and land use and the resulting shifts in species distributions and ecosystem functions have motivated the development of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). Integrating across spatial scales from ground sampling to remote sensing, NEON will provide data for users to address ecological responses to changes in climate, land use, and species invasion across the United States for at least 30 years. Although NEON remote sensing and tower sensor elements are relatively well known, the biological measurements are not. This manuscript describes NEON...

Recent studies in Southeast Alaska suggest the ecology of Glaucomys sabrinus differs from populations in the Pacific Northwest. In Southeast Alaska, densities were the highest reported for the species, populations were not as closely linked to old-forest attributes, and individuals had a more diverse diet that was less dependent on mycophagy. Pacific Northwest communities are comprised of several arboreal rodents; Southeast Alaska has a depauperate mammal fauna. I hypothesized that Southeast Alaska populations had a broader realized niche because of competitive release. The red squirrel...

The statistical properties of potential estimators of forest area for the USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program are presented and discussed. The current FIA area estimator is compared and contrasted with a weighted mean estimator and an estimator based on the Polya posterior, in the presence of nonresponse. Estimator optimality is evaluated both theoretically and via simulation under bias and mean squared error criteria.The results indicate that, under realistic conditions, the current FIA area estimator can sometimes result in substantial bias and have a higher...

Although outcomes of hybridization are highly variable, it is now considered to play an important role in evolution, speciation, and invasion. Hybridization has recently been confirmed between populations of yellow (or common) toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) and Dalmatian toadflax (Linaria dalmatica) in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States. The presence of hybrid toadflax populations on public lands is of concern, as both parents are aggressive invaders already listed as noxious weeds in multiple western states. A common garden experiment was designed to measure differences in...

The wildland–urban interface represents landscape change—changes brought about by urbanization, by shifts in forest management, and altered disturbance regimes, each having ecological, social, and economic ramifications. In this chapter, I will focus on some of the ecological ramifications associated with landscape change, primarily forest fragmentation and deforestation, resulting from urbanization. In particular, I will review forest fragmentation from a landscape and site perspective; examine the ecological aspects of edges, corridors, and roads; and discuss fragmentation in relation to...

Large population sizes and global distributions generally associate with high mitochondrial DNA control region (CR) diversity. The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is an exception, showing low CR diversity relative to other cetaceans; however, diversity levels throughout the remainder of the sperm whale mitogenome are unknown. We sequenced 20 mitogenomes from 17 sperm whales representative of worldwide diversity using Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies (Illumina GAllx, Roche 454 GS Junior). Resequencing of three individuals with both NGS platforms and partial Sanger sequencin...

In late 2008, a group of business people and entrepreneurs in southeast Alaska became aware of a compressed wood brick product that could be used as an alternative fuel in existing wood-burning stoves and heating equipment. The product differed from many others on the market in that it contained no additive to promote binding and burn characteristics. In 2009, local materials in the form of sawmill residuals and chipped material from land clearing were collected, dried, and shipped to a producer in the northeast United States. A set of returned samples was sent to the University of Alaska...