Great Basin land management planning using ecological modeling.

This report describes a land management modeling effort that analyzed potential impacts of proposed actions under an updated Bureau of Land Management Resource Management Plan that will guide management for 20 years on 4.6 million hectares in the Great Basin ecoregion of the United States. State-and-transition models that included vegetation data, fire histories, and many parameters (i.

Nitrogen and carbon storage in alpine plants.

Alpine plants offer unique opportunities to study the processes and economics of nutrient storage. The short alpine growing season forces rapid completion of plant growth cycles, which in turn causes competition between vegetative and reproductive growth sinks during the early part of the growing season. Mobilization of stored nitrogen and carbon reserves facilitates competing sinks and permits successful completion of reproduction before the onset of winter stress.

Seedling establishment and life history trade-offs in alpine plants.

Seedling establishment is central to population maintenance for nonclonal plant species. Plants with low recruitment rates are expected to have high survival rates, and life history theory indicates there should be a single curve for the trade-off between recruitment and mortality that applies to most or all plant species. Alpine perennials are thought to have extraordinarily low recruitment rates because of the harsh environment, but the importance of recruitment in the life history of these plants is unknown.

Temporal patterns in seedling establishment on pocket gopher disturbances.

Disturbances often facilitate seedling establishment, and can change the species composition of a community by increasing recruitment of disturbance-adapted species. To understand the effects of pocket gopher disturbances on alpine seedling dynamics, we examined the gopher disturbances' effects on seedling emergence and survival on gopher disturbances 0 to 5 years old. In contrast to results from most other ecosystems, these recently created gopher mounds had lower seedling emergence and survival rates than undisturbed areas.

Seedling demography in an alpine ecosystem.

Seedling establishment has long been believed to be rare on alpine tundra because of predicted life history trade-offs, the clonality of alpine species, and the harshness of the alpine climate. Contrary to the idea that seedlings are rare on alpine tundra, a 4-yr demographic study of seedlings at Niwot Ridge, Colorado, USA, found seedlings at high densities, particularly in wetter plant communities. Higher germination densities were associated with higher soil moistures both across communities and across time.

The evolution of embryo size in angiosperms and other seed plants: implications for the evolution of seed dormancy.

Seed dormancy plays an important role in germination ecology and seed plant evolution. Morphological seed dormancy is caused by an underdeveloped embryo that must mature prior to germination. It has been suggested that the presence of an underdeveloped embryo is plesiomorphic among seed plants and that parallel directional change in embryo morphology has occurred separately in gymnosperms and in angiosperms.

Resistance to pre-dispersal seed predators in a natural hybrid zone.

Plant hybrids can be more, less, or equally resistant to herbivores compared to their parental species. These patterns in resistance can be critical determinants of the fitness of plant hybrids and may also influence distribution of the herbivore. We examined resistance to a pre-dispersal seed predator by natural and experimental hybrids between Ipomopsis aggregata and I.