Tag: food webs
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Fish domination of avian food webs
By Christine Parisek & Jon Walter . . . Food webs are the backbones of ecosystems: they chart the flow of energy through ecosystems in terms of who eats whom, and their structure helps determine whether an ecosystem will be stable over time. While food web studies often focus on relationships within a particular habitat…
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The foodscape – (re) connecting salmon to the productive capacity of their watersheds
By Gabriel J. Rossi, J. Ryan Bellmore, Jonathan B. Armstrong, Carson Jeffres, Sean M. Naman, Stephanie M. Carlson, Theodore E. Grantham, Matthew J. Kaylor, Seth White, Jacob Katz, Mary E. Power In 1927, the famous ecologist Charles Elton (when he was 27 years old) set the stage for the modern ecological study when he published his…
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Can large dams help feed downstream ecosystems?
By Francisco J. Bellido-Leiva, Nicholas Corline, and Robert A. Lusardi About 1,500 dams obstruct, modify, and regulate flow in all but one of California’s major rivers. These dams provide Californians with reliable drinking and irrigation water, flood protection for low-lying communities, and hydropower for our electrical grid. But dams also threaten downstream ecosystems by severely disrupting…
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A “Peak” into California’s Alpine Lakes and their Food Webs
By Christine A. Parisek “The Sierra Nevada is five hundred miles of rock put right. Granite freed by glaciers and lifted through clouds where water, frozen and fine, has scraped and washed it into a high country so brilliant it brings light into night.” – Willard Wyman Alpine lakes are fascinating ecosystems. They are recognized…
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Being patient and persistent with nature
By Andrew L. Rypel In the coming weeks, fall-run Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) will appear in Putah Creek again to spawn. The fact that any salmon spawn in Putah Creek is a small miracle, and testimony to the resilience of salmon and a small army of people that worked tirelessly to restore and care for…
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Do largemouth bass like droughts?
By Andrew L. Rypel “The Delta is full of species that thrive in the lakes in southern Arkansas” ~Bill Bennett by Andrew Rypel As we rapidly enter another drought, long-standing questions on ecological impacts of increased temperatures, reduced water levels and flows re-emerge. This reality recently reminded me of some of my own previous work…
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Eat Prey Loon: lessons from juvenile loons in Wisconsin
by Brian A. Hoover, Andrew L. Rypel and Walter H. Piper Do you remember when you first moved from home, and were completely on your own in new surroundings? How did you decide where to live, or which restaurants to try for the first time? Did you try places randomly, or did you seek familiar…
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Making “productive” assessments of California’s ecosystems
by Andrew L. Rypel Conservation science and restoration ecology are challenging and interdisciplinary fields. Managing for ecological function necessitates focus on multiple scales of ecological organization while simultaneously integrating feedback loops with critical environmental drivers like temperature, flow and habitat change. This means scientists working on these issues can emerge from diverse areas of inquiry…