Publications

Correct description of fuel properties is critical to improve fire danger assessment and fire behaviour modeling, since they guide both fire ignition and fire propagation. This chapter deals with properties of fuel that can be considered static in short periods of time: biomass loads, plant geometry, compactness, etc. Mapping these properties require a detail knowledge of vegetation vertical and h

Abundance of invasive plants is often attributed to their ability ot outcompete native species. We compared resource acquisition and allocation of the invasive annual grass Bromus madritensis subsp. rubens with that of two native Mojave Desert annuals, Vulpia octoflora and Descurainia pinnata, in a glasshouse experiment. Each species was grown in monoculture at two densities and two levels of N av

Patterns of native and alien plant diversity in response to disturbance were examined along an elevational gradient in blue oak savanna, chaparral, and coniferous forests. Total species richness, alien species richness, and alien cover declined with elevation, at scales from 1 to 1000 m2. We found no support for the hypothesis that community diversity inhibits alien invasion. At the 1-m2 point sca

Common Ravens (Corvus corax) in the Mojave Desert of California, USA are subsidized by anthropogenic resources. Large numbers of nonbreeding ravens are attracted to human developments and thus are spatially restricted, whereas breeding ravens are distributed more evenly throughout the area. We investigated whether the spatial distribution of risk of predation by ravens to juveniles of the threaten

Uta stansburiana and Elgaria multicarinata occur on several California Channel Islands, and recent introduction of some populations has been suggested because of similarity in life-history traits and body size to mainland populations. We sequenced representatives of each species from mainland southern California and some of the islands on which they occur. For each species, cytochrome bsequence di

We examined the temporal variation in capture rates of shrewsNotiosorex crawfordi (Coues, 1877) and Sorex ornatus (Merriam, 1895) in 20 sites representing fragmented and continuous habitats in southern California, USA. InN. crawfordi, the temporal variation was significantly correlated with the mean capture rates. Of the 6 landscape variables analyzed (size of the landscape, size of the sample are

No abstract available.

Sea otter (Enhydra lutris) populations were exploited to near extinction and began to recover after the cessation of commercial hunting in 1911. Remnant colonies of sea otters in the Aleutian archipelago were among the first to recover; they continued to increase through the 1980s but declined abruptly during the 1990s. We conducted an aerial survey of the Aleutian archipelago in 2000 and compared

Survival of adult Desert Tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) appears related to site-specific variation in precipitation and productivity of annual plants. We studied adult tortoise survival rates at two closely situated, but physiographically different, sites in the eastern Mojave Desert over a nine-year period (spring 1992 to spring 2001). Survival rates were initially derived from population surveys

No abstract available. 

No abstract available at this time

No abstract available at this time