Ecology Montane Meadows in the Sierra Nevada: A comparison of terrestrial and aquatic assessment methods Abstract We surveyed montane meadows in the northern Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades for two field seasons to compare commonly used aquatic and terrestrial-based assessments of meadow condition. We surveyed 1) fish, 2) reptiles, 3) amphibians, 4) aquatic macroinvertebrates, 5) stream geo...

We created several interactive learning objects that illustrate organisms within their natural habitats by linking videos to “hotspots” within panoramic vistas of the habitat; students can access these at will and in whatever order they choose. By linking other vistas to hotspots within the primary panorama, the student can take a virtual field trip, examining different views of that habitat, a...

As a consequence of wildlife habitat is in constant evolution, periodic monitoring is essential to assess habitat quality. In this study the change to the red-crowned crane habitat in the Yellow River Delta Nature Reserve (YRDNR) was detected from multi-temporal remote sensing data from 1992 to 2008 in a geographic information system (GIS). The changing quality of the habitat was evaluated from...

—Variation in habitat suitability can alter the growth and mortality of early life stages of fishes but is often difficult to measure, quantify, and apply to the entire system. We designed and tested habitat suitability index (HSI) models incorporating both proximate riverine parameters and surrounding landscape features as determinates of optimal spawning and nursery areas for American shad Al...

Introduction The objective of this bulletin is to describe a stream habitat inventory procedure that will classify and quantify fish habitat in terms of channel features. The procedure is based on information gathered in gravel and boulder-bed streams in the western Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington and in the Kla-math Mountains of California (Bisson et al., 1981; Sullivan, 1986, Grant...

The physical characteristics of river systems exert significant control on the habitat for aquatic species, including the distribution of in-stream channel habitat units. Most previous studies on channel habitat units have focused on midlatitude rivers, which differ in several substantive ways from tropical rivers. Field delineation of channel habitat units is especially challenging in tropical...

Little is known about the relationship between animal movements and the emergent structure of populations, especially for species occupying large continuous distributions. Some such mammals disperse disproportionately into habitat similar to their natal habitat, a behavioural bias that might be expected to lead to habitat-conforming genetic structure. We hypothesized that coyotes (Canis latrans...

We introduce an analysis method to demonstrate correlation between biota and the physical habitats that they occupy. Using the same calculations as does Nei’s genetic distance index, this method builds independent dissimilarity matrices for both habitat and fauna, which can then be compared in a common statistical framework. An important advantage of this method is that only frequency data are ...

community An ecological term referring to a set of species that occur in the same location that have the potential to affect each other either directly or indirectly. community structure The web of potential biological interactions among members of a community that may be characterized in terms of diversity, complexity, hierarchy, and stability. ecotone A zone of transition between two differen...