Aboveground woody biomass Detection limits Error assessment Historic aerial photography Land cove... more Aboveground woody biomass Detection limits Error assessment Historic aerial photography Land cover Panchromatic Prosopis velutina Retrospective ground truth Retrospective mapping Santa Rita experimental range Sonoran Desert Velvet mesquite a b s t r a c t Aerial photography from the 1930s serves as the earliest synoptic depiction of vegetation cover. We generated a spatially explicit database of shrub (Prosopis velutina) stand structure within two 1.8 ha field plots established in 1932 to address two questions: (1) What are the detection limits of panchromatic 1936 aerial photography?, and (2) How do these influence P. velutina biomass estimates? Shrub polygons were manually digitized on 1936 imagery and linked to 1932 field measurements of P. velutina canopy area. Aboveground 1932 P. velutina biomass was estimated using a site-specific allometric relationship for field-measured canopy area. Shrub canopy detection limits on the 1936 imagery were comparable to those reported for contemporary imagery. Based on a conservative shrub size detection threshold of 3.8 m 2 , 5.8% of P. velutina biomass was missed. Spatial resolution (0.6 vs. 1.0 m) did not influence detection limits, but the overall accuracy of shrub cover estimates was greater on 1.0 m images. Presence of the sub-shrub Isocoma tenuisecta may also have significantly influenced estimates of P. velutina canopy area. These analyses illustrate the importance of standardizing aerial photo interpretation protocols, accounting for uncertainty estimating shrub biomass, and caution species-specific interpretations for historic aerial photography.
Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often l... more Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often limiting and thus can affect growth, mass change, reproduction, and behaviors such as thermoregulation, locomotion, and mating. Experimental studies in natural settings allow researchers to examine the effects of food on these parameters while animals are free to behave naturally. The wide variation among organisms in energy demands and among environmental food resources suggest that responses to changes in food availability may vary among organisms. Since most supplemental feeding field experiments have been conducted on species with high energy demands, we conducted a supplemental feeding study on free-ranging, female Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), a species with low energy demands and infrequent reproductive investment. Snakes were offered thawed rodents 1-4 times per week. Over two active seasons, we collected data on surface activity, home range size, growth, mass change, and reproduction of supplementally fed and control snakes. Fed and control snakes did not differ in surface activity levels (proportion of time encountered above versus below ground) or home range size. Fed snakes grew and gained mass faster, and had a dramatically higher occurrence of reproduction than control snakes. Also, fed snakes were in better body condition following reproduction than snakes that were not fed. However, litter characteristics such as offspring number and size were not increased by feeding, suggesting that these characteristics may be fixed. These data experimentally demonstrate that food availability can directly impact some life history traits (i.e., growth and reproduction for C. atrox), but not others (i.e., surface activity and home range size for C. atrox). The relationship between food availability and life history traits is affected in a complex way by ecological traits and physiological constraints, and thus interspecific variation in this relationship is likely to be high.
2010 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2010
Civilian applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have rapidly been expanding recently. Tha... more Civilian applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have rapidly been expanding recently. Thanks to military development many civil UAVs come via the defense sector. Although numerous UAVs can perform civilian tasks, the regulations imposed by FAA in the national airspace system and military equivalent agencies in restricted airspace need to be closely considered and followed in order to make progress in civilian applications.
International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2010
Shifts in vegetation composition and cover are the result of processes acting at different levels... more Shifts in vegetation composition and cover are the result of processes acting at different levels such as landscapes, hill slopes, or plant interspaces. Analytical approaches designed for discrete objects which are based upon the inherently hierarchical nature of complex systems are well suited to research applications conducted across spatial scales. We quantified spatial and temporal vegetation dynamics over 71 years
Rangeland comprises as much as 70% of the Earth's land surface area. Much of this vast space is i... more Rangeland comprises as much as 70% of the Earth's land surface area. Much of this vast space is in very remote areas that are expensive and often impossible to access on the ground. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have great potential for rangeland management. UAVs have several advantages over satellites and piloted aircraft: they can be deployed quickly and repeatedly; they are less costly and safer than piloted aircraft; they are flexible in terms of flying height and timing of missions; and they can obtain imagery at sub-decimeter resolution. This hyperspatial imagery allows for quantification of plant cover, composition, and structure at multiple spatial scales. Our experiments have shown that this capability, from an off-the-shelf mini-UAV, is directly applicable to operational agency needs for measuring and monitoring. For use by operational agencies to carry out their mandated responsibilities, various requirements must be met: an affordable and reliable platform; a capability for autonomous, low altitude flights; takeoff and landing in small areas surrounded by rugged terrain; and an easily applied data analysis methodology. A number of image processing and orthorectification challenges have been or are currently being addressed, but the potential to depict the land surface commensurate with field data perspectives across broader spatial extents is unrivaled.
Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often l... more Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often limiting and thus can affect growth, mass change, reproduction, and behaviors such as thermoregulation, locomotion, and mating. Experimental studies in natural settings allow researchers to examine the effects of food on these parameters while animals are free to behave naturally. The wide variation among organisms in energy demands and among environmental food resources suggest that responses to changes in food availability may vary among organisms. Since most supplemental feeding field experiments have been conducted on species with high energy demands, we conducted a supplemental feeding study on free-ranging, female Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), a species with low energy demands and infrequent reproductive investment. Snakes were offered thawed rodents 1-4 times per week. Over two active seasons, we collected data on surface activity, home range size, growth, mass change, and reproduction of supplementally fed and control snakes. Fed and control snakes did not differ in surface activity levels (proportion of time encountered above versus below ground) or home range size. Fed snakes grew and gained mass faster, and had a dramatically higher occurrence of reproduction than control snakes. Also, fed snakes were in better body condition following reproduction than snakes that were not fed. However, litter characteristics such as offspring number and size were not increased by feeding, suggesting that these characteristics may be fixed. These data experimentally demonstrate that food availability can directly impact some life history traits (i.e., growth and reproduction for C. atrox), but not others (i.e., surface activity and home range size for C. atrox). The relationship between food availability and life history traits is affected in a complex way by ecological traits and physiological constraints, and thus interspecific variation in this relationship is likely to be high.
Woody plant abundance is widely recognized to have increased in savannas and grasslands worldwide... more Woody plant abundance is widely recognized to have increased in savannas and grasslands worldwide. The lack of information on the rates, dynamics, and extent of increases in shrub abundance is a major source of uncertainty in assessing how this vegetation change has influenced biogeochemical cycles. Projecting future consequences of woody cover change on ecosystem function will require knowledge of where shrub cover in present-day stands lies relative to the realizable maximum for a given soil type within a bioclimatic region. We used time-series aerial photography (1936, 1966, and 1996) and field studies to quantify cover and biomass of velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina Woot.) following its proliferation in a semidesert grassland of Arizona. Mapping of individual shrubs indicated an encroachment phase characterized by high rates of bare patch colonization. Upon entering a stabilization phase, shrub cover increases associated with recruitment and canopy expansion were largely offset by contractions in canopy area of other shrub patches. Instances of shrub disappearance coincided with a period of below-average rainfall . Overall, shrub cover (mean 6 SE) on sandy uplands with few and widely scattered shrubs in 1902 was dynamically stable over the 1936-1996 period averaging ;35% 6 5%. Shrub cover on clayey uplands in 1936 was 17% 6 2% but subsequently increased twofold to levels comparable to those on sandy uplands by 1966 (36% 6 7%). Cover on both soils then decreased slightly between 1966 and 1996 to 28% 6 3%. Thus, soil properties influenced the rate at which landscapes reached a dynamic equilibrium, but not the apparent endpoint. Although sandy and clayey landscapes appear to have stabilized at comparable levels of cover, shrub biomass was 1.4 times greater on clayey soils. Declines in shrub cover between 1966 and 1996 were accompanied by a shift to smaller patch sizes on both sandy and clayey landscapes. Dynamics observed during the stabilization phase suggest that density-dependent regulation may be in play. If woody cover has transitioned from directional increases to a dynamic equilibrium, biomass projections will require monitoring and modeling patch dynamics and stand structure rather than simply changes in total cover.
Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a co... more Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a cornerstone in understanding population ecology. The main factors that are thought to influence population size are either resources (bottom-up), or predation (topdown), or interspecific competition (parallel). However, there are highly variable and often contradictory results regarding their relative strengths and influence. These varied results are often interpreted as indicating ‘‘shifting control’’ among the three main factors, or a complex, nonlinear relationship among environmental variables, resource availability, predation, and competition. We argue here that there is a ‘‘missing link’’ in our understanding of predator–prey dynamics. We explore whether the landscape-of-fear model can help us clarify the inconsistencies and increase our understanding of the roles, extent, and possible interactions of top-down, bottom-up, and parallel factors on prey population abundance. We propose two main predictions derived from the landscape-of-fear model: (1) for a single species, we suggest that as the makeup of the landscape of fear changes from relatively safe to relatively risky, bottom-up impacts switch from strong to weak as top-down impacts go from weak to strong; (2) for two or more species, interspecific competitive interactions produce various combinations of bottom-up, top-down, and parallel impacts depending on the dominant competing species and whether the landscapes of fear are shared or distinctive among competing species. We contend that these predictions could successfully explain many of the complex and contradictory results of current research. We test some of these predictions based on long-term data for small mammals from the Chihuahuan Desert in the United States and Mexico. We conclude that the landscape-of-fear model does provide reasonable explanations for many of the reported studies and should be tested further to better understand the effectsof bottom-up, top-down, and parallel factors on population dynamics
Aboveground woody biomass Detection limits Error assessment Historic aerial photography Land cove... more Aboveground woody biomass Detection limits Error assessment Historic aerial photography Land cover Panchromatic Prosopis velutina Retrospective ground truth Retrospective mapping Santa Rita experimental range Sonoran Desert Velvet mesquite a b s t r a c t Aerial photography from the 1930s serves as the earliest synoptic depiction of vegetation cover. We generated a spatially explicit database of shrub (Prosopis velutina) stand structure within two 1.8 ha field plots established in 1932 to address two questions: (1) What are the detection limits of panchromatic 1936 aerial photography?, and (2) How do these influence P. velutina biomass estimates? Shrub polygons were manually digitized on 1936 imagery and linked to 1932 field measurements of P. velutina canopy area. Aboveground 1932 P. velutina biomass was estimated using a site-specific allometric relationship for field-measured canopy area. Shrub canopy detection limits on the 1936 imagery were comparable to those reported for contemporary imagery. Based on a conservative shrub size detection threshold of 3.8 m 2 , 5.8% of P. velutina biomass was missed. Spatial resolution (0.6 vs. 1.0 m) did not influence detection limits, but the overall accuracy of shrub cover estimates was greater on 1.0 m images. Presence of the sub-shrub Isocoma tenuisecta may also have significantly influenced estimates of P. velutina canopy area. These analyses illustrate the importance of standardizing aerial photo interpretation protocols, accounting for uncertainty estimating shrub biomass, and caution species-specific interpretations for historic aerial photography.
Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often l... more Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often limiting and thus can affect growth, mass change, reproduction, and behaviors such as thermoregulation, locomotion, and mating. Experimental studies in natural settings allow researchers to examine the effects of food on these parameters while animals are free to behave naturally. The wide variation among organisms in energy demands and among environmental food resources suggest that responses to changes in food availability may vary among organisms. Since most supplemental feeding field experiments have been conducted on species with high energy demands, we conducted a supplemental feeding study on free-ranging, female Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), a species with low energy demands and infrequent reproductive investment. Snakes were offered thawed rodents 1-4 times per week. Over two active seasons, we collected data on surface activity, home range size, growth, mass change, and reproduction of supplementally fed and control snakes. Fed and control snakes did not differ in surface activity levels (proportion of time encountered above versus below ground) or home range size. Fed snakes grew and gained mass faster, and had a dramatically higher occurrence of reproduction than control snakes. Also, fed snakes were in better body condition following reproduction than snakes that were not fed. However, litter characteristics such as offspring number and size were not increased by feeding, suggesting that these characteristics may be fixed. These data experimentally demonstrate that food availability can directly impact some life history traits (i.e., growth and reproduction for C. atrox), but not others (i.e., surface activity and home range size for C. atrox). The relationship between food availability and life history traits is affected in a complex way by ecological traits and physiological constraints, and thus interspecific variation in this relationship is likely to be high.
2010 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2010
Civilian applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have rapidly been expanding recently. Tha... more Civilian applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) have rapidly been expanding recently. Thanks to military development many civil UAVs come via the defense sector. Although numerous UAVs can perform civilian tasks, the regulations imposed by FAA in the national airspace system and military equivalent agencies in restricted airspace need to be closely considered and followed in order to make progress in civilian applications.
International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 2010
Shifts in vegetation composition and cover are the result of processes acting at different levels... more Shifts in vegetation composition and cover are the result of processes acting at different levels such as landscapes, hill slopes, or plant interspaces. Analytical approaches designed for discrete objects which are based upon the inherently hierarchical nature of complex systems are well suited to research applications conducted across spatial scales. We quantified spatial and temporal vegetation dynamics over 71 years
Rangeland comprises as much as 70% of the Earth's land surface area. Much of this vast space is i... more Rangeland comprises as much as 70% of the Earth's land surface area. Much of this vast space is in very remote areas that are expensive and often impossible to access on the ground. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have great potential for rangeland management. UAVs have several advantages over satellites and piloted aircraft: they can be deployed quickly and repeatedly; they are less costly and safer than piloted aircraft; they are flexible in terms of flying height and timing of missions; and they can obtain imagery at sub-decimeter resolution. This hyperspatial imagery allows for quantification of plant cover, composition, and structure at multiple spatial scales. Our experiments have shown that this capability, from an off-the-shelf mini-UAV, is directly applicable to operational agency needs for measuring and monitoring. For use by operational agencies to carry out their mandated responsibilities, various requirements must be met: an affordable and reliable platform; a capability for autonomous, low altitude flights; takeoff and landing in small areas surrounded by rugged terrain; and an easily applied data analysis methodology. A number of image processing and orthorectification challenges have been or are currently being addressed, but the potential to depict the land surface commensurate with field data perspectives across broader spatial extents is unrivaled.
Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often l... more Food availability is an important factor in the life histories of organisms because it is often limiting and thus can affect growth, mass change, reproduction, and behaviors such as thermoregulation, locomotion, and mating. Experimental studies in natural settings allow researchers to examine the effects of food on these parameters while animals are free to behave naturally. The wide variation among organisms in energy demands and among environmental food resources suggest that responses to changes in food availability may vary among organisms. Since most supplemental feeding field experiments have been conducted on species with high energy demands, we conducted a supplemental feeding study on free-ranging, female Western diamond-backed rattlesnakes (Crotalus atrox), a species with low energy demands and infrequent reproductive investment. Snakes were offered thawed rodents 1-4 times per week. Over two active seasons, we collected data on surface activity, home range size, growth, mass change, and reproduction of supplementally fed and control snakes. Fed and control snakes did not differ in surface activity levels (proportion of time encountered above versus below ground) or home range size. Fed snakes grew and gained mass faster, and had a dramatically higher occurrence of reproduction than control snakes. Also, fed snakes were in better body condition following reproduction than snakes that were not fed. However, litter characteristics such as offspring number and size were not increased by feeding, suggesting that these characteristics may be fixed. These data experimentally demonstrate that food availability can directly impact some life history traits (i.e., growth and reproduction for C. atrox), but not others (i.e., surface activity and home range size for C. atrox). The relationship between food availability and life history traits is affected in a complex way by ecological traits and physiological constraints, and thus interspecific variation in this relationship is likely to be high.
Woody plant abundance is widely recognized to have increased in savannas and grasslands worldwide... more Woody plant abundance is widely recognized to have increased in savannas and grasslands worldwide. The lack of information on the rates, dynamics, and extent of increases in shrub abundance is a major source of uncertainty in assessing how this vegetation change has influenced biogeochemical cycles. Projecting future consequences of woody cover change on ecosystem function will require knowledge of where shrub cover in present-day stands lies relative to the realizable maximum for a given soil type within a bioclimatic region. We used time-series aerial photography (1936, 1966, and 1996) and field studies to quantify cover and biomass of velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina Woot.) following its proliferation in a semidesert grassland of Arizona. Mapping of individual shrubs indicated an encroachment phase characterized by high rates of bare patch colonization. Upon entering a stabilization phase, shrub cover increases associated with recruitment and canopy expansion were largely offset by contractions in canopy area of other shrub patches. Instances of shrub disappearance coincided with a period of below-average rainfall . Overall, shrub cover (mean 6 SE) on sandy uplands with few and widely scattered shrubs in 1902 was dynamically stable over the 1936-1996 period averaging ;35% 6 5%. Shrub cover on clayey uplands in 1936 was 17% 6 2% but subsequently increased twofold to levels comparable to those on sandy uplands by 1966 (36% 6 7%). Cover on both soils then decreased slightly between 1966 and 1996 to 28% 6 3%. Thus, soil properties influenced the rate at which landscapes reached a dynamic equilibrium, but not the apparent endpoint. Although sandy and clayey landscapes appear to have stabilized at comparable levels of cover, shrub biomass was 1.4 times greater on clayey soils. Declines in shrub cover between 1966 and 1996 were accompanied by a shift to smaller patch sizes on both sandy and clayey landscapes. Dynamics observed during the stabilization phase suggest that density-dependent regulation may be in play. If woody cover has transitioned from directional increases to a dynamic equilibrium, biomass projections will require monitoring and modeling patch dynamics and stand structure rather than simply changes in total cover.
Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a co... more Identifying factors that may be responsible for regulating the size of animal populations is a cornerstone in understanding population ecology. The main factors that are thought to influence population size are either resources (bottom-up), or predation (topdown), or interspecific competition (parallel). However, there are highly variable and often contradictory results regarding their relative strengths and influence. These varied results are often interpreted as indicating ‘‘shifting control’’ among the three main factors, or a complex, nonlinear relationship among environmental variables, resource availability, predation, and competition. We argue here that there is a ‘‘missing link’’ in our understanding of predator–prey dynamics. We explore whether the landscape-of-fear model can help us clarify the inconsistencies and increase our understanding of the roles, extent, and possible interactions of top-down, bottom-up, and parallel factors on prey population abundance. We propose two main predictions derived from the landscape-of-fear model: (1) for a single species, we suggest that as the makeup of the landscape of fear changes from relatively safe to relatively risky, bottom-up impacts switch from strong to weak as top-down impacts go from weak to strong; (2) for two or more species, interspecific competitive interactions produce various combinations of bottom-up, top-down, and parallel impacts depending on the dominant competing species and whether the landscapes of fear are shared or distinctive among competing species. We contend that these predictions could successfully explain many of the complex and contradictory results of current research. We test some of these predictions based on long-term data for small mammals from the Chihuahuan Desert in the United States and Mexico. We conclude that the landscape-of-fear model does provide reasonable explanations for many of the reported studies and should be tested further to better understand the effectsof bottom-up, top-down, and parallel factors on population dynamics
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