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With Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams, Gary A. Laursen and Rodney Seppelt offer the first field guide to cryptogams of the Denali National Park and Preserve. Useful to both lay and professional investigators, this fully illustrated compendium covers mushroom fungi, lichenized fungi, lichenicolous fungi, slime molds, mosses, and liverworts. This field guide to commonly seen cryptogams will provide a basis for understanding their vast diversity of taxa, speciation, edibility, relative abundance, and utility, as well as the ecological roles played by these organisms.
This volume summarizes our current understanding of biological soil crusts (biocrusts), which are omnipresent in dryland regions. Since they cover the soil surface, they influence, or even control, all surface exchange processes. Being one of the oldest terrestrial communities, biocrusts comprise a high diversity of cyanobacteria, algae, lichens and bryophytes together with uncounted bacteria, and fungi. The authors show that biocrusts are an integral part of dryland ecosystems, stabilizing soils, influencing plant germination and growth, and playing a key role in carbon, nitrogen and water cycling. Initial attempts have been made to use biocrusts as models in ecological theory. On the other hand, biocrusts are endangered by local disruptions and global change, highlighting the need for enhanced recovery methods. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the fascinating field of biocrust research, making it indispensable not only for scientists in this area, but also for land managers, policy makers, and anyone interested in the environment.
Bryophytes, especially mosses, represent a largely untapped resource for monitoring and indicating effects of climate change on the living environment. They are tied very closely to the external environment and have been likened to 'canaries in the coal mine'. Bryophyte Ecology and Climate Change is the first book to bring together a diverse array of research in bryophyte ecology, including physiology, desiccation tolerance, photosynthesis, temperature and UV responses, under the umbrella of climate change. It covers a great variety of ecosystems in which bryophytes are important, including aquatic, desert, tropical, boreal, alpine, Antarctic, and Sphagnum-dominated wetlands, and considers the effects of climate change on the distribution of common and rare species as well as the computer modeling of future changes. This book should be of particular value to individuals, libraries, and research institutions interested in global climate change.
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Cryosols – permafrost – occupy a unique part of the earth and have properties greatly different from other soils. They also occur where the greatest impact of global warming is predicted. This is the first book bring together the leading researchers in the area of permafrost soils to produce a review of the geography, cryogenic soil forming processes, ecological processes, classification and use of soils that are affected by permafrost.
Research in Antarctica in the past two decades has fundamentally changed our perceptions of the southern continent. This volume describes typical terrestrial environments of the maritime and continental Antarctic. Life and chemical processes are restricted to small ranges of ambient temperature, availability of water and nutrients. This is reflected not only in life processes, but also in those of weathering and pedogenesis. The volume focuses on interactions between plants, animals and soils. It includes aspects of climate change, soil development and biology, as well as above- and below-ground results of interdisciplinary research projects combining data from botany, zoology, microbiology, pedology, and soil ecology.
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