Environmental Effect Of Fragmentation In New England

The purpose of this experiment is to observe secondary succession at Umass Dartmouth and test the prediction that diversity increases through ecological succession. Students went outside to the lawn underneath the wind mill on campus. 3 transect sites were located by the instructor. Students predicted the species and percent cover of each species on each trail site. Bar charts were made to compare the number of species in each transect. Pi-charts were made to compare the percent coverage of species in each transect.

Roads act as barriers to animal movement and lead to habitat broken up . Many species will not cross the open space created by a road due to the threat of predators. Roads also cause increased animal deaths from traffic. the barrier effect can also prevent species from migrating areas where the species gone locally extinct as well as restricting access to seasonally available or widely scattered resources. Habitat separation may also divide large continuous populations into smaller more isolated populations. The smaller populations are vulnerable to genetic drift such as inbreeding depression and an increased risk of population decline and

This report discusses an experiment to study the relationship between the ecological niche and competition. The hypothesis formulated states that if competition traits are identical and resources are abundant than multiple species will be able to coexist, and if one species has an advantage over the others than this species will be more likely to out compete another species for resources. The objective of this experiment is to use a simulation model of a rabbit pen containing four different “species” of rabbits. The model establishes rules for each species that are based on a number of important characteristics reflecting their ecological niches and their competitive abilities. These

For example, their concept indicates that prey species will alter their foraging habits to the features of the terrain in order to avoid areas with a high risk of predation. Predation risk in a changing environment is also focused on by the authors. There are many environmental variables that may influence the degree of predation risk such as weather, wildfires, and other conditions that influence ungulates’ access to vegetation. Finally, the authors focus on ecosystem responses to trophic cascades—primarily on riparian functions and on beaver and bird populations. They also inform us that wolves may represent an indirect control on beaver populations as well as cause ungulates to avoid some riparian areas—therefore reducing herbivory on wooden browse species.

Forest succession is the process of change in the species structure in a forested community over time. Succession is fundamental to forest ecology because it allows ecologist to predict what communities will do in disturbances such as wildfires, flooding, and clear cuts. Succession can be site and time specific requiring the use of scales such as micro of mega. Based on the knowledge from previous labs such as silvics and seed ecology students predictions could be that because of seed banks and species silvics succession can drastically change over time based on a stands management.

Because of this succession, we develop two different types of forests, young growth and old growth forests. Young growth forests consist of many of the early-successional trees and have more trees overall, yet still tend to have less basal area, or the area taken up by the bases of the trees. Old growth forests, on the other hand, are formed almost completely by late-successional trees with the bases of the trees spaced further apart yet with more basal area.

It can likewise smolder vegetation groups, for example, rainforest that take several years to recoup, murder undermined species, cause disintegration and resulting sedimentation of rivers and wetlands and open ranges up to the effects of weed and non domesticated creature attack and additionally human get to and vandalism. Patterson, J. (2005). Australian Wildlife: Little,

The construction of these networks, however, is continuous and brings with it numerous destructive implications for fauna in the area. Multiple features of an ecosystem such as vegetation, dwellings and resources may be affected with the disruption and modification of the natural setting.

The purpose of our experiment was to test the intermediate disturbance hypothesis by observing plant diversity patterns along a trail. According to the theory, we should observe minimal plant diversity right next to the trail and not much far from the trail. However, there should be a greater amount of diversity some intermediate distance from the trail. We went to the James K. McPherson preserve to observe the types of plants and number of them along the trail. Our sampling method was to observe a patch of vegetation measuring 10cm by 50cm, looking for different plant species and number of individuals. We excluded all trees and shrubs and only measured tree and shrub seedlings and other understory species. Our results showed that further away from the trail, there were more diverse plants and more of them. Our experiment supports the idea that intermediate levels of disturbance promote diversity.

The most widely accepted theory of forest decline is the chain reaction theory given by Sinclair (1965). According to this theory,

Deforestation: Many various species can be extinct whenever trees are cut down because by decreasing the trees’ population, we are hereby destroying animals’ habitats and decreasing photosynthesis.

Emphasis must be drawn on the maintenance of existing primary forest patches, and the regeneration of medium areas between fragments to increase native habitat area, connectivity and ecosystem functions (Bradshaw, 2012).

This result led to an indication that an open area is a less stressful environment for competing plant species than a wooded area, but there are other factors to consider, like nutrient retention plants and nutrient uptake plants, where as the purpose for plant species competition in the wooded areas would be sunlight (Mangla, 2011). The two most influential types of competition that can be found in nature are intraspecific and interspecific competition. Intraspecific is when an individual or population within a species to out compete the rest, while interspecific is when a species as a whole out competes other species (Mangla, 2011). Therefore, both types of competition demand that an individual of a species or a species as a whole accumulates resources more efficiently than the

Improving old growth forest, has some consequences to the three components of sustainability, which are ecology, society, and economy. In the economic sense, timbers would lose the ability to cut as much wood to provide a better habitat for deer. They would lose profit and jobs in the logging industry. In the ecological sense, if there is an improvement of habitat, it would cause more a higher population in deer. If there is a higher population in deer, there would be more loss of shrubs and small trees, which would change the forest composition. This affect will change abundance of variety of birds and mammals. It would affect the overall ecology of these areas. In the societal sense, if there is an increase of deer, there has to be more and stricter management and policies for deer hunting. If there are more deer, there may be more human and deer conflict, with the potential of car accidents/

The first of the two essays being examined, “Connecting natural landscapes using a landscape permeability model to prioritize conservation activities in the United States” by Theobald et. al discusses the issues of connectivity for different species when humans destroy their landscape and ecosystem. This essay shows us that fragmentation has decreased biodiversity, and human interaction with the