Browsing by Author "Verschuyl, Jacob Pieter"

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Biodiversity potential in the Pacific and Inland Northwest : the relative importance of forest structure and available energy in driving species diversity
(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2007) Verschuyl, Jacob Pieter; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Andrew J. Hansen
Currently, the most common strategy of forest biodiversity managers in the Pacific and Inland Northwest (PINW) is to maintain structural complexity within forest stands and create the full range of seral stages across the landscape. Recent advances in ecological theory reveal that biodiversity at regional to continental scales is strongly influenced by available energy (i.e. factors influencing vegetative growth such as precipitation, temperature, radiation, soil fertility). We hypothesized bird species richness (BSR) exhibits a positive or unimodal relationship with energy across landscapes and the relationship between energy and BSR within a landscape is positive in energy limited landscapes and flat or decreasing in energy rich landscapes. Additionally, we hypothesized that structural complexity explains a lower percentage of the variation in BSR in energy limited environments and higher percentage in energy rich environments and that the slope of the relationship between structural complexity and BSR is greatest in energy rich environments.