Publications by authors named "Cari D Ficken"
Article Synopsis
- Biological indicators are essential for assessing ecosystem health, but there's often a lack of data for accurately assigning values that reflect how specific species respond to environmental conditions.
- This study focused on using trait data from publicly accessible databases to estimate ecological conservatism scores (C-scores) for plant species, testing this method across different regions and acknowledged that while some traits showed consistency, predictability was low.
- The findings suggest that the inconsistencies arise from the generalization of region-specific C-scores from trait data, leading to high misclassification rates; thus, future efforts should aim to enhance trait database quality and incorporate more detailed environmental data.
Article Synopsis
- Boreal wetlands are threatened by human activities like oil sands extraction, but fewer studies focus on how various types of development affect wetland plant communities.
- Despite only about 20% of the oil sands regions being developed, anthropogenic activities were negatively associated with plant community health, suggesting that wetlands near human development mainly support generalist plant species.
- The impact of energy and mining development was less clear, indicating that while it affects wetlands, its direct consequences may be limited due to the small physical footprint of these operations within the larger oil sands area.
Litter quality and soil environmental conditions are well-studied drivers influencing decomposition rates, but the role played by disturbance legacy, such as fire history, in mediating these drivers is not well understood. Fire history may impact decomposition directly, through changes in soil conditions that impact microbial function, or indirectly, through shifts in plant community composition and litter chemistry. Here, we compared early-stage decomposition rates across longleaf pine forest blocks managed with varying fire frequencies (annual burns, triennial burns, fire-suppression).
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