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Divaricating Plants in New Zealand in Relation to Moa Browsing
GREENWOOD AND ATKINSON: DIYARICATING PLANTS AND MOA BROWSING 21 EVOLUTION OF DIVARICATING PLANTS IN NEW ZEALAND IN RELATION TO MOA BROWSING R. M. GREENWOOD' and I. A. E. ATKINSON' SUMMAR Y: New Zealand appears to be the only country where spineless, small-leaved divaricating plants make up nearly 10% of the woody flora. Climatic explanations have been advanced to &ccount for the origin of these divaricating plants. We suggest that the divergent and interl~ced branching, the woody exterior and the tough stems of these plants are adaptations evolved in response to browsing by moas. Together with a few species of much smaHer birds, moas were the only browsing vertebrates in New Zealand prior to the arrival of man. Thq divaricate habit is probably only one of several strategies evolved by plants in response to moa browsing. However, because fioas fed in a different way from mammals there is little to support the idea that introduced browsing mammals have merely replaced moas as aQ ecological factor in New Zealand. MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES OF NEW ZEALAND difficult. The most helpful keys are those of Bulmer DIY ARICATING fLANTS (1958) and Taylor (1961), which deal specifioolly The term Hdivaricating", indicating branching at with these plants. New Zealand species found in this a wide angle, is used in New Zealand to describe the investigation to be capable of divaricating are listed many species of small-leaved woody shrubs that in Table 1. In cases where there was difficulty in have closely interlaced bra,nches. Some are the deciding whether a species should be included in juvenile stages of trees that lose the divaricate habit the table the criteria used for inclusion were (i) as they grow taUer. -
Supplementary Materials Section S1. Tabernas
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS SECTION S1. TABERNAS BADLANDS The climatological conditions and the sparsely vegetated landscape of the study area justify the local name of “Desierto de Tabernas” (Tabernas Desert) (Lázaro, Rodrigo, Gutiérrez, Domingo, & Puigdefábregas, 2001). However, it does not meet the demanding climatic criteria for entry into the desert category. The main argument that can be given for it is that the climate of the zone is semi-arid. In addition, the vegetation cover is thick where it can be. The asymmetry present in many of the small catchments integrating these badlands is linked to the vegetation pattern. North to east facing hillslopes are larger, more stable and less steep. Here plant cover ranges from 20% to 40% in the area (Puigdefabregas, Sole, Gutierrez, del Barrio, & Boer, 1999). The opposite slopes are affected by erosion, shorter, steeper, and bare (Calvo- Cases et al., 2014). The Tabernas badlands cannot be considered as the result of a desertification process. There has been no misuse of resources here (at least until recently, see next section). In other words, this desolate landscape is not the result of overexploitation. The reason is that this territory, due to its complicated orography, has never harbored an economy capable of promote substantial land degradation. On the upper hillslopes, M. tenacissima used to be harvested for cellulose, while the footslope sedimentary fill was cultivated with rainfed cereal crops. Both types of land use ceased about 50 years ago (Puigdefabregas et al., 1999). It was also possible to find some irrigation confined to small areas by then. In Almería, the use of subsoil water in irrigation is a long-established and dominant practice (Sánchez-Picón, Aznar-Sánchez, & García-Latorre, 2011) and, although by far the greater part of the agricultural lands was not irrigated, irrigation has been the economic basis of Almería because of the high yields it produced (Latorre, García-Latorre, & Sanchez-Picón, 2001). -
Moss-Dominated Biocrusts Increase Soil Microbial Abundance And
Applied Soil Ecology 117–118 (2017) 165–177 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Soil Ecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apsoil Moss-dominated biocrusts increase soil microbial abundance and MARK community diversity and improve soil fertility in semi-arid climates on the Loess Plateau of China ⁎ Bo Xiaoa,b, , Maik Vestec,d a Department of Soil and Water Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China b State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yangling, 712100, China c University of Hohenheim, Institute of Botany (210), Garbenstrasse 30, Stuttgart, 70599, Germany d Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Soil Protection and Recultivation, Konrad-Wachsmann-Allee 6, Cottbus, 03046, Germany ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Various ecological functions of biocrusts are mostly determined by their bacterial and fungal abundance and Biological soil crust community diversity, which has not yet been fully investigated. To provide more insights into this issue, we Microbiotic crust collected samples of moss biocrusts, fixed sand, and mobile sand from a watershed with semi-arid climate on the Microbial community composition Loess Plateau of China. The relative abundances and community diversities of soil bacteria and fungi of the Microbial community diversity samples were determined using high-throughput DNA sequencing. Finally, we analyzed the characteristics of Relative abundance of species bacterial and fungal community of the moss biocrusts and their relationships to the content of soil nutrients. Our High-throughput sequencing results showed that the moss biocrusts had 1048 bacterial OTUs (operational taxonomic units) and 58 fungal OTUs, and their Shannon diversity indexes were 5.56 and 1.65, respectively. -
Interdisciplinary Investigation on Ancient Ephedra Twigs from Gumugou Cemetery (3800B.P.) in Xinjiang Region, Northwest China
MICROSCOPY RESEARCH AND TECHNIQUE 00:00–00 (2013) Interdisciplinary Investigation on Ancient Ephedra Twigs From Gumugou Cemetery (3800b.p.) in Xinjiang Region, Northwest China 1,2 1,2 3 1,2 MINGSI XIE, YIMIN YANG, * BINGHUA WANG, AND CHANGSUI WANG 1Laboratory of Human Evolution, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100044, China 2Department of Scientific History and Archaeometry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China 3School of Chinese Classics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China KEY WORDS Ephedra; SEM; chemical analysis; GC-MS ABSTRACT In the dry northern temperate regions of the northern hemisphere, the genus Ephedra comprises a series of native shrub species with a cumulative application history reach- ing back well over 2,000 years for the treatment of asthma, cold, fever, as well as many respira- tory system diseases, especially in China. There are ethnological and philological evidences of Ephedra worship and utilization in many Eurasia Steppe cultures. However, no scientifically verifiable, ancient physical proof has yet been provided for any species in this genus. This study reports the palaeobotanical finding of Ephedra twigs discovered from burials of the Gumugou archaeological site, and ancient community graveyard, dated around 3800 BP, in Lop Nor region of northwestern China. The macro-remains were first examined by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and then by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for traits of residual bio- markers under the reference of modern Ephedra samples. The GC-MS result of chemical analy- sis presents the existence of Ephedra-featured compounds, several of which, including benzaldehyde, tetramethyl-pyrazine, and phenmetrazine, are found in the chromatograph of both the ancient and modern sample. -
Soil Loss) Assessment 29 5.1 Introduction
Soil Erosion Assessment Using Remotely Sensed Data and Ancillary Data in the Desert Of Tabernas, southeast Spain Yared Jillo Gobena , 2003 Soil Erosion Assessment Using Remotely Sensed Data and Ancillary Data in the Desert Of Tabernas, southeast Spain by Yared Jillo Gobena Thesis submitted to the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree in Master of Science in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, Environmental System Analysis and Monitoring specialization. Degree Assessment Board Thesis advisor Dr. Tsehaie Woldai prof. Dr. Freek van der Meer Thesis examiners prof. Dr. Freek van der Meer (Chairman) Dr. K.Hein UU (External Examiner) Dr. Dr. D.P. Shrestha (Member) Dr. P.M. van Dijk (PD) (Observer) INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR GEO-INFORMATION SCIENCE AND EARTH OBSERVATION ENSCHEDE, THE NETHERLANDS Disclaimer This document describes work undertaken as part of a programme of study at the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC). All views and opinions expressed therein remain the sole responsibility of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of the institute. Contents List of Figures iii List of Tables v Acknowledgements vii Abstract ix 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY AREA . 3 1.2 PREVIOUS ACTIVITIES . 4 1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES . 5 1.4 IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH . 5 1.5 METHODOLOGY . 5 1.6 RESEARCH MOTIVATIONS . 6 1.7 HYPOTHESIS . 7 1.8 RESEARCH OUTLINE . 7 2 DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY AREA 9 2.1 LOCATIONS AND ACCESS . 9 2.2 CLIMATE . 10 2.3 GEOMORPHOLOGY . -
01. Antarctica (√) 02. Arabia
01. Antarctica (√) 02. Arabia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Desert A corridor of sandy terrain known as the Ad-Dahna desert connects the largeAn-Nafud desert (65,000 km2) in the north of Saudi Arabia to the Rub' Al-Khali in the south-east. • The Tuwaiq escarpment is a region of 800 km arc of limestone cliffs, plateaux, and canyons.[citation needed] • Brackish salt flats: the quicksands of Umm al Samim. √ • The Wahiba Sands of Oman: an isolated sand sea bordering the east coast [4] [5] • The Rub' Al-Khali[6] desert is a sedimentary basin elongated on a south-west to north-east axis across the Arabian Shelf. At an altitude of 1,000 m, the rock landscapes yield the place to the Rub' al-Khali, vast wide of sand of the Arabian desert, whose extreme southern point crosses the centre of Yemen. The sand overlies gravel or Gypsum Plains and the dunes reach maximum heights of up to 250 m. The sands are predominantly silicates, composed of 80 to 90% of quartz and the remainder feldspar, whose iron oxide-coated grains color the sands in orange, purple, and red. 03. Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserts_of_Australia Great Victoria Western Australia, South Australia 348,750 km2 134,650 sq mi 1 4.5% Desert Great Sandy Desert Western Australia 267,250 km2 103,190 sq mi 2 3.5% Tanami Desert Western Australia, Northern Territory 184,500 km2 71,200 sq mi 3 2.4% Northern Territory, Queensland, South Simpson Desert 176,500 km2 68,100 sq mi 4 2.3% Australia Gibson Desert Western Australia 156,000 km2 60,000 sq mi 5 2.0% Little Sandy Desert Western Australia 111,500 km2 43,100 sq mi 6 1.5% South Australia, Queensland, New South Strzelecki Desert 80,250 km2 30,980 sq mi 7 1.0% Wales South Australia, Queensland, New South Sturt Stony Desert 29,750 km2 11,490 sq mi 8 0.3% Wales Tirari Desert South Australia 15,250 km2 5,890 sq mi 9 0.2% Pedirka Desert South Australia 1,250 km2 480 sq mi 10 0.016% 04. -
UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Vesicular Horizon Distribution, Properties, and Pedogenic Processes in Deserts of the Western United States Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/325854wj Author Turk, Judith Katherine Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Vesicular Horizon Distribution, Properties, and Pedogenic Processes in Deserts of the Western United States A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Soil and Water Sciences by Judith Katherine Turk March 2012 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Robert C. Graham, Chairperson Dr. Christopher Amrhein Dr. Katherine Kendrick Copyright by Judith Katherine Turk 2012 The Dissertation of Judith Katherine Turk is approved: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge my advisor, Dr. Robert Graham, and committee members, Dr. Christopher Amrhein and Dr. Katherine Kendrick, for their guidance with the project. I am greatly indebted to several friends who helped me in the field, including Shahriar Uddin, Christina Conn, Myles Davis, and Nathan Bailey. I would like to thank Dr. Brenda Buck and Dr. Patrick Drohan for their helpful reviews of my SSSA paper, included here as Chapter 2. I am thankful to Myles Davis, Peter Homyak, and Annie Rossi for many helpful discussions about the work. I’d like to thank Tricia Menchaca for her help interpreting the lithology of the desert pavements and Nicole Pietrasiak for sharing her description of the Clark Mountains soil with me, and for including me in her permit application to work at this site. -
From Kashgar to Xanadu in the Travels of Marco Polo Amelia Carolina Sparavigna
From Kashgar to Xanadu in the Travels of Marco Polo Amelia Carolina Sparavigna To cite this version: Amelia Carolina Sparavigna. From Kashgar to Xanadu in the Travels of Marco Polo. 2020. hal- 02563026 HAL Id: hal-02563026 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02563026 Preprint submitted on 5 May 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. From Kashgar to Xanadu in the Travels of Marco Polo Amelia Carolina Sparavigna Politecnico di Torino Uploaded 21 April 2020 on Zenodo DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3759380 Abstract: In two previous papers (Philica, 2017, Articles 1097 and 1100), we investigated the travels of Marco Polo, using Google Earth and Wikimapia. We reconstructed the Polo’s travel from Beijing to Xanadu and from Sheberghan to Kashgar. Here we continue the analysis of this travel from today Kashgar to Xanadu. Keywords: Satellite Images, Google Earth, Wikimapia, Marco Polo, Taklamakan, Southwest Xinjiang, Lop Desert, Xanadu, Marco Polo, China. The Travels of Marco Polo is a 13th-century book writen by Rustchello da Pisa, reportng the stories told by Marco to Rustchello while they were in prison together in Genoa. This book is describing the several travels through Asia of Polo and the period that he spent at the court of Kublai Khan [1]. -
Big Ear” Image in Lop Nor Region and Its Environmental Significance Xuncheng XIA1) and Yuanjie ZHAO*2)
沙漠研究 24-1, 237-240 (2014) Ἃ₍◊✲ 24-1, 237 - 240 (2014) Journal of Arid Land Studies - DT11 Refereed Paper - Journal of Arid Land Studies 㸫DT11 Refereed Paper㸫 Research Progresses in Morphological Features of the Area with “Big Ear” Image in Lop Nor Region and Its Environmental Significance Xuncheng XIA1) and Yuanjie ZHAO*2) Abstract: In 1972, a Landsat MSS image clearly showed a “Big ear” shape in Lop Nor region, Xinjiang, China, which is one of the extreme drought regions in the world, and is a typical area to research environmental change of arid zones. For a long time, many researchers and common people expressed concern about the meaning and origin of the “Big ear” shape. In this paper we summarize research developments in these areas. The researched results show that the morphological pattern like the “Helix lines” of human being is the yearly and seasonal salt sedimentary structure lines in the process of forming salt crusts. The dark and light change of color tone depends on the burial depth of brine layers, the sand content in the salt crust, and the change in surface texture (roughness). There are different estimates of the age of formation of the “Big ear” from the 1930s to 1965. In the future, in order to clearly reveal the process of “Big ear” formation, it is necessary to conduct further accurate measures of the lake basin landform, and regional water balance analysis, and to systematically define the function of human activities in the process of Lop Nor drying. Key Words: Big ear, Dating, Environmental change, Lop Nor location, despite growing interest in the area (Dong et al., 1. -
Interactive Effects of Climate Change and Species Composition on Alpine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics
Interactive effects of climate change and plant invasion on alpine biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics Justyna Giejsztowt M.Sc., 2013 University of Poitiers, France; Christian-Albrechts University, Germany B. Sc., 2010 University of Canterbury, New Zealand A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Biological Sciences Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka 2019 i ii This thesis was conducted under the supervision of Dr Julie R. Deslippe (primary supervisor) Victoria University of Wellington Wellington, New Zealand And Dr Aimée T. Classen (secondary supervisor) University of Vermont Burlington, United States of America iii iv “May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” -Edward Abbey v vi Abstract Drivers of global change have direct impacts on the structure of communities and functioning of ecosystems, and interactions between drivers may buffer or exacerbate these direct effects. Interactions among drivers can lead to complex non-linear outcomes for ecosystems, communities and species, but are infrequently quantified. Through a combination of experimental, observational and modelling approaches, I address critical gaps in our understanding of the interactive effects of climate change and plant invasion, using Tongariro National Park (TNP; New Zealand) as a model. TNP is an alpine ecosystem of cultural significance which hosts a unique flora with high rates of endemism. TNP is invaded by the perennial shrub Calluna vulgaris (L.) Hull. My objectives were to: 1) determine whether species- specific phenological shifts have the potential to alter the reproductive capacity of native plants in landscapes affected by invasion; 2) determine whether the effect of invasion intensity on the Species Area Relationship (SAR) of native alpine plant species is influenced by environmental stress; 3) develop a novel modelling framework that would account for density-dependent competitive interactions between native species and C. -
Soil Wind Erosion in Ecological Olive Trees in the Tabernas Desert (Southeastern Spain): a Wind Tunnel Experiment
Solid Earth, 7, 1233–1242, 2016 www.solid-earth.net/7/1233/2016/ doi:10.5194/se-7-1233-2016 © Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Soil wind erosion in ecological olive trees in the Tabernas desert (southeastern Spain): a wind tunnel experiment Carlos Asensio1, Francisco Javier Lozano1, Pedro Gallardo1, and Antonio Giménez2 1Departamento de Agronomía, CEIA3, Campus de Excelencia Internacional en Agroalimentación, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain 2Departamento de Ingeniería, Universidad de Almería, Almería, Spain Correspondence to: Carlos Asensio ([email protected]) Received: 12 April 2016 – Published in Solid Earth Discuss.: 29 April 2016 Revised: 27 July 2016 – Accepted: 28 July 2016 – Published: 22 August 2016 Abstract. Wind erosion is a key component of the soil degra- by other authors for Spanish soils. As the highest loss was dation processes. The purpose of this study is to find out the found in Cambisols, mainly due to the effect on soil crusting influence of material loss from wind on soil properties for and the wind-erodible fraction aggregation of CaCO3, a Ste- different soil types and changes in soil properties in olive via rebaudiana cover crop was planted between the rows in groves when they are tilled. The study area is located in the this soil type and this favored retention of particles in vege- north of the Tabernas Desert, in the province of Almería, tation. southeastern Spain. It is one of the driest areas in Europe, with a semiarid thermo-Mediterranean type of climate. We used a new wind tunnel model over three different soil types (olive-cropped Calcisol, Cambisol and Luvisol) and studied 1 Introduction micro-plot losses and deposits detected by an integrated laser scanner. -
Film Production Guide
Film Production Guide YUKONCANADA 2010 Table of Contents Yukon Film & Sound Commission Services ......................................................................................6 Staff ............................................................................................7 Yukon Film Incentive Programs ......................................................8 Federal Funding Programs ...........................................................10 Goods and Services Tax .............................................................. 11 Filming in Yukon Getting to Canada's Yukon ..........................................................14 Yukon Communities ....................................................................18 Average Temperatures & Snow Depths ..........................................20 Sunrise and Sunset .....................................................................21 Stay Warm! ................................................................................22 Yukon Crew ................................................................................24 Work Permits for Canada ............................................................25 Yukon Employment Standards .....................................................26 Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Safety Board.................27 Code of Conduct for Cast and Crew ..............................................28 Grip and Electrics Rentals ............................................................30 Electrical Permit Requirements .....................................................31