January 2019
Lab members had a suite of papers come out this fall. Big congratulations especially to Lina and Eliza, who both had their first first-author papers published!
Eliza’s paper tackles the interacting effects of nitrogen deposition and invasion on fire dynamics in California grasslands. High quality litter should decompose quickly, and fast litter decomposition should reduce fuel loads. Eliza found that N-deposition increased the quality of litter (and this its rate of decomposition) within a species. However, N-deposition also favored an invasive annual grass over a native perennial grass, and the invasive grass has lower quality litter that decomposes more slowly than litter from the native grass. Thus, ultimately N-deposition lead to an increase in fuel loads and fire risk in California. Check it out here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140196318301630
In her recent paper, Lina looked at different perceptions of ranchers, managers and academics on “conservation” in California rangelands. Although conservation in rangelands often depends on partnerships among different stakeholders, ranchers, managers and academics had somewhat different views of what conservation means. Rancher’s tended to adopt a Leopold-esque “sustainable use” perspective, whereas managers typical had a more Muir-esque, preservation-focused view of conservation. Academic perception were in between these two views. Land use change was a shared concern among the three groups. Check it out here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052818300828
Plus Ashley is pumping out her PhD papers:
Shaw, E. A., C. M. Booth, J. C. Moore, D. H. Wall, J. S. Baron. 2019. Long-term nitrogen addition shifts the soil nematode community to bacterivore-dominated and reduces its ecological maturity in a subalpine forest. SOil Biology and Biochemistry.
Find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0038071718304176
And Lauren finally has a paper from Jasper Ridge:
Hallett, L. M., E. C. Farrer, K. N. Suding, H. A. Mooney, R. J. Hobbs. 2018. Tradeoffs in demographic mechanisms underlie differences in species abundance and stability. In press, Nature Communications.
Find it here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07535-w
Plus a new methods paper with Shaopeng Wang:
Wang, S., T. Lamy, L. M. Hallett, M. Loreau. 2019. Stability and synchrony across ecological hierarchies in heterogeneous metacommunities: linking theory to data. In press, Ecography.
Find it here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecog.04290