Journal
JOURNAL OF ARID ENVIRONMENTS
Volume 46, Issue 4, Pages 357-369Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS LTD
DOI: 10.1006/jare.2000.0704
Keywords
Arizona; Cynomys gunnisoni; high desert grasslands; fractals; Gunnison's prairie dog; landscape ecology; Morisita's index; Petrified Forest National Park
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The influence of landscape spatial structure on ecological processes has recently received much attention. Comparisons are made here between the spatial structure of grasslands, and active and extirpated Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnison Hollister) towns at the Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, U.S.A. The spatial structure of bare ground was quatified using a box-counting technique to extract landscape fractal dimensions, D, and bareground patch size. These landscapes are fractal, and active prairie dog towns had higher fractal dimensions, i.e. a more homogeneous spatial structure as D approaches 2, than inactive towns, which had higher fractal dimensions than unmodified grasslands. Morisita's index suggested that shrubs were more randomly distributed on prairie dog towns and more aggregated on grassland habitats. The different spatial distributions of bare ground and shrubs have the potential to influence resource distributions between these habitats for both prairie dogs and other fauna. Consequently, the presence of prairie dogs in these grasslands increases grassland landscape heterogeneity at large spatial scales, potentially enhancing beta diversity. (C) 2000 Academic Press.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available