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Dichanthelium Leibergii
''Dichanthelium leibergii'', known as variously as Leiberg's panicum, Leiberg's panicgrass, Leiberg's rosette grass, and prairie panic grass is a species of grass native to North America. It was named for its discoverer, John Bernhard Leiberg (1853-1913), a Swedish-born American botanist active in the western United States. Description Leiberg's panicgrass is a small perennial grass forming loose rosettes with culms between in height. It is distinguished from other similar species of ''Dichanthelium'' by a combination of the following characters: * leave less than wide and less than 15-20 times as long as wide * leaves hairy * stem slender with narrowly ovoid panicle * spikelets with long, soft hairs up to in length * first glume narrowly ovate, reaching the middle of the spikelet Distribution ''Dichanthelium leibergii'' ranges north to Alberta, west to Kansas, and east to New York state. Although it is "fairly common" in Manitoba, it is a rare species across much of its ran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quercus Velutina
''Quercus velutina'', the black oak, is a species of oak in the red oak group (''Quercus'' sect. ''Lobatae''), native and widespread in eastern and central North America. It is sometimes called the eastern black oak. ''Quercus velutina'' was previously known as yellow oak due to the yellow pigment in its inner bark. It is a close relative of the California black oak (''Quercus kelloggii'') found in western North America. Description In the northern part of its range, black oak is a relatively small tree, reaching a height of and a diameter of , but it grows larger in the south and center of its range, where heights of up to are known. The leaves of the black oak are alternately arranged on the twig and are long with 5–7 bristle-tipped lobes separated by deep U-shaped notches. The upper surface of the leaf is a shiny deep green, the lower is yellowish-brown. There are also stellate hairs on the underside of the leaf that grow in clumps. Some key characteristics for identific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prairie Restoration
Prairie restoration is a conservation effort to restore prairie lands that were destroyed due to industrial, agricultural, commercial, or residential development. For example, the U.S. state of Illinois alone once held over of prairie land and now just of that original prairie land is left. Purpose Ecologically, prairie restoration aids in conservation of earth's topsoil, which is often exposed to erosion from wind and rain when prairies are plowed under to make way for new commerce. Conversely, much more of the prairie lands have become the fertile fields on which cereal crops of corn, barley and wheat are grown. Many prairie plants are also highly resistant to drought, temperature extremes, disease, and native insect pests. They are frequently used for xeriscaping projects in arid regions of the American West. A restoration project of prairie lands can be large or small. A backyard prairie restoration will enrich soil, help with erosion and take up extra water in excess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invasive Species
An invasive species otherwise known as an alien is an introduced organism that becomes overpopulated and harms its new environment. Although most introduced species are neutral or beneficial with respect to other species, invasive species adversely affect habitats and bioregions, causing ecological, environmental, and/or economic damage. The term can also be used for native species that become harmful to their native environment after human alterations to its food webfor example the purple sea urchin (''Strongylocentrotus purpuratus'') which has decimated kelp forests along the northern California coast due to overharvesting of its natural predator, the California sea otter (''Enhydra lutris''). Since the 20th century, invasive species have become a serious economic, social, and environmental threat. Invasion of long-established ecosystems by organisms is a natural phenomenon, but human-facilitated introductions have greatly increased the rate, scale, and geographic range of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Destruction
Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby reducing biodiversity and species abundance. Habitat destruction is the leading cause of biodiversity loss. Fragmentation and loss of habitat have become one of the most important topics of research in ecology as they are major threats to the survival of endangered species. Activities such as harvesting natural resources, industrial production and urbanization are human contributions to habitat destruction. Pressure from agriculture is the principal human cause. Some others include mining, logging, trawling, and urban sprawl. Habitat destruction is currently considered the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. Environmental factors can contribute to habitat destruction more indirectly. Geological processes, climate change, introdu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habitat Fragmentation
Habitat fragmentation describes the emergence of discontinuities (fragmentation) in an organism's preferred environment (habitat), causing population fragmentation and ecosystem decay. Causes of habitat fragmentation include geological processes that slowly alter the layout of the physical environment (suspected of being one of the major causes of speciation), and human activity such as land conversion, which can alter the environment much faster and causes the extinction of many species. More specifically, habitat fragmentation is a process by which large and contiguous habitats get divided into smaller, isolated patches of habitats. Definition The term habitat fragmentation includes five discrete phenomena: * Reduction in the total area of the habitat * Decrease of the interior: edge ratio * Isolation of one habitat fragment from other areas of habitat * Breaking up of one patch of habitat into several smaller patches * Decrease in the average size of each patch of habitat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prescribed Burning
A controlled or prescribed burn, also known as hazard reduction burning, backfire, swailing, or a burn-off, is a fire set intentionally for purposes of forest management, farming, prairie restoration or greenhouse gas abatement. A controlled burn may also refer to the intentional burning of slash and fuels through burn piles. Fire is a natural part of both forest and grassland ecology and controlled fire can be a tool for foresters. Hazard reduction or controlled burning is conducted during the cooler months to reduce fuel buildup and decrease the likelihood of serious hotter fires. Controlled burning stimulates the germination of some desirable forest trees, and reveals soil mineral layers which increases seedling vitality, thus renewing the forest. Some cones, such as those of lodgepole pine and sequoia, are pyriscent, as well as many chaparral shrubs, meaning they require heat from fire to open cones to disperse seeds. In industrialized countries, controlled burning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Cover
The abundances of plant species are often measured by plant cover, which is the relative area covered by different plant species in a small plot. Plant cover is not biased by the size and distributions of individuals, and is an important and often measured characteristic of the composition of plant communities. Usage Plant cover data may be used to classify the studied plant community into a vegetation type, to test different ecological hypothesis on plant abundance, and in gradient studies, where the effects of different environmental gradients on the abundance of specific plant species are studied . Measurement The most common way to measure plant cover in herbal plant communities, is to make a visual assessment of the relative area covered by the different species in a small plot (see quadrat). The visually assessed cover of a plant species is then recorded as a continuous variable between 0 and 1, or divided into interval classes as an ordinal variable. An alternative methodo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prairie Remnant
A prairie remnant commonly refers to grassland areas in the Western and Midwestern United States and Canada that remain to some extent undisturbed by European settlement. Prairie remnants range in levels of degradation but nearly all contain at least some semblance of the pre-Columbian local plant assemblage of a particular region. Prairie remnants have become increasingly threatened due to the threats of agricultural, urban and suburban development, pollution, fire suppression, and the incursion of invasive species. Prairie remnants in restoration ecology Prairie remnants offer valuable varieties of rare species thus providing excellent opportunities for restoration ecology projects. Many restoration projects are simply recreations of prairie habitats, but restoring prairie remnants provides the preservation of more complete ecological structures that were naturally created after the end of the last ice age. Remnants can also serve as platforms for additional surrounding ecolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Vasey (botanist)
George Vasey (February 28, 1822 – March 3, 1893) was an English-born American botanist who collected a lot in Illinois before integrating the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he became Chief Botanist and curator of the greatly expanded National Herbarium. Biography George Vasey was born in 1822 near Scarborough, England, the fourth of ten children. His family emigrated to the United States the next year, and they established in Oriskany, New York. He left school at 12 to take a job as a store clerk. He took interest in botany after borrowing and, since he could not afford the volume, manually copying a book on the subject. This interest was later encouraged after a chance encounter with Peter D. Knieskern, another naturalist who allowed Vasey to begin writing to various other botanists. Until 1870 he would maintain an extensive correspondence and collect a great many specimens both in Oneida County and later McHenry County, but did not publish material of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coefficient Of Conservatism
Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a tool used to assess an area's ecological integrity based on its plant species composition. Floristic Quality Assessment was originally developed in order to assess the likelihood that impacts to an area "would be irreversible or irretrievable...to make standard comparisons among various open land areas, to set conservation priorities, and to monitor site management or restoration efforts." The concept was developed by Gerould Wilhelm in the 1970s in a report on the natural lands of Kane County, Illinois. In 1979 Wilhelm and Floyd Swink codified this "scoring system" for the 22-county Chicago Region. Coefficient of conservatism Each plant species in a region is assigned a coefficient of conservatism, also known as a C-value, ranging between 0 and 10. A plant species with a higher score (e.g. 10) has a ''lower'' tolerance to environmental degradation such as overgrazing or development and therefore is naturally restricted to undisturbed, r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culm (botany)
A culm is the aerial (above-ground) stem of a grass or sedge. It is derived from Latin 'stalk', and it originally referred to the stem of any type of plant. In horticulture or agriculture, it is especially used to describe the stalk or woody stems of bamboo, cane or grain grasses. Malting In the production of malted grains, the culms refer to the rootlets of the germinated grains. The culms are normally removed in a process known as "deculming" after kilning when producing barley malt, but form an important part of the product when making sorghum or millet Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets al ... malt. These culms are very nutritious and are sold off as animal feed. References Plant morphology {{Botany-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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