457 research outputs found
Do Community-Level Models Account for the Effects of Biotic Interactions? A Comparison of Community-Level and Species Distribution Modeling of Rocky Mountain Conifers
Community-level models (CLMs) aim to improve species distribution modeling (SDM) methods by attempting to explicitly incorporate the influences of interacting species. However, the ability of CLMs to appropriately account for biotic interactions is unclear. We applied CLM and SDM methods to predict the distributions of three dominant conifer tree species in the U.S. Rocky Mountains and compared CLM and SDM predictive accuracy as well as the ability of each approach to accurately reproduce species co-occurrence patterns. We specifically evaluated the performance of two statistical algorithms, MARS and CForest, within both CLM and SDM frameworks. Across all species, differences in SDM and CLM predictive accuracy were slight and can be attributed to differences in model structure rather than accounting for the effects of biotic interactions. In addition, CLMs generally over-predicted species cooccurrence, while SDMs under-predicted cooccurrence. Our results demonstrate no real improvement in the ability of CLMs to account for biotic interactions relative to SDMs. We conclude that alternative modeling approaches are needed in order to accurately account for the effects of biotic interactions on species distributions
Stand Density and Age Affect Tree-level Structural and Functional Characteristics of Young, Postfire Lodgepole Pine in Yellowstone National Park
More frequent fire activity associated with climate warming is expected to increase the extent of young forest stands in fire-prone landscapes, yet growth rates and biomass allocation patterns in young forests that regenerated naturally following stand-replacing fire have not been well studied. We assessed the structural and functional characteristics of young, postfire lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) trees across the Yellowstone subalpine plateaus to understand the influence of postfire stand density and age on tree-level aboveground biomass (AB), component biomass (bole, branch, foliage), partitioning to components, tree-level aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) and leaf area (LA). Sixty 24- year-old lodgepole pine trees were harvested from 21 sites ranging from 500 to 74,667 stems-ha-1 for development of allometric equations to predict biomass, ANPP and LA. All traits increased nonlinearly with increasing tree basal diameter. Tree-level total AB and component biomass decreased with increasing stand density and increased with age when compared with measurements from 11-year-old trees. Bole partitioning increased with stand density, while foliage and branch wood partitioning declined. Tree-level ANPP and LA decreased significantly with stand density and age. Overall, our results indicate that stand density and age explain much of the variation in tree characteristics and that 24 years after fire, the initial postfire regeneration density is still exerting significant influence on the structure and function of individual trees
The Abacus Cosmos: A Suite of Cosmological N-body Simulations
We present a public data release of halo catalogs from a suite of 125
cosmological -body simulations from the Abacus project. The simulations span
40 CDM cosmologies centered on the Planck 2015 cosmology at two mass
resolutions, and , in and
boxes, respectively. The boxes are phase-matched to
suppress sample variance and isolate cosmology dependence. Additional volume is
available via 16 boxes of fixed cosmology and varied phase; a few boxes of
single-parameter excursions from Planck 2015 are also provided. Catalogs
spanning to are available for friends-of-friends and Rockstar
halo finders and include particle subsamples. All data products are available
at https://lgarrison.github.io/AbacusCosmosComment: 13 pages, 9 figures, 3 tables. Additional figures added for mass
resolution convergence tests, and additional redshifts added for existing
tests. Matches ApJS accepted versio
The Stripe 82 Massive Galaxy Project II: Stellar Mass Completeness of Spectroscopic Galaxy Samples from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has collected spectra for
over one million galaxies at over a volume of 15.3 Gpc (9,376
deg) -- providing us an opportunity to study the most massive galaxy
populations with vanishing sample variance. However, BOSS samples are selected
via complex color cuts that are optimized for cosmology studies, not galaxy
science. In this paper, we supplement BOSS samples with photometric redshifts
from the Stripe 82 Massive Galaxy Catalog and measure the total galaxy stellar
mass function (SMF) at and . With the total SMF in hand,
we characterize the stellar mass completeness of BOSS samples. The
high-redshift CMASS ("constant mass") sample is significantly impacted by mass
incompleteness and is 80% complete at only in
the narrow redshift range . The low redshift LOWZ sample is 80%
complete at for . To construct
mass complete samples at lower masses, spectroscopic samples need to be
significantly supplemented by photometric redshifts. This work will enable
future studies to better utilize the BOSS samples for galaxy-formation science.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, 5 table
Fibrous myopathy induced by intramuscular injections of cyclizine
A 63-year-old woman was referred to neurology with bilateral severe progressive pain and stiffness in her thighs. The patient had a 3-year history of injecting intramuscular cyclizine into the anterior thigh to treat nausea associated with a longstanding pan-enteric dysmotility syndrome. MRI of the thighs demonstrated fibrotic appearances. A biopsy of the left vastus lateralis and surrounding fascia identified pathology consistent with a fibrous myopathy. The patient was advised to stop intramuscular injections of cyclizine and undergo physiotherapy but she still remained in considerable pain. Although fibrous myopathy occurring as a consequence of recurrent intramuscular drug injections, particularly heroin, has been previously described, this is the first report of fibrous myopathy associated with the use of intramuscular cyclizine. We highlight this rare association and suggest that the long-term use of intramuscular cyclizine be avoided
Environmental Determinants of Recruitment Success of Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) in a Mixed-Conifer Forest
Understanding the processes that underlie forest resilience is of increasing importance as climate change and shifting disturbance regimes continue to impact western forests. Forest research and management efforts within the low-diversity conifer forests of the U.S. Rocky Mountains have typically focused on relatively monotypic stands dominated by a single cohort, but mixed-conifer stands, such as those codominated by Abies lasiocarpa and Pinus contorta have been less widely studied. The presence of A. lasiocarpa may enhance resilience to fire- and mountain pine beetle–induced mortality and depends on successful A. lasiocarpa recruitment under a range of environmental conditions. The purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of key forest structural characteristics and environmental conditions on recruitment of A. lasiocarpa in a midelevation mixed-conifer forest in the central Rocky Mountains. To address this aim, A. lasiocarpa seedling density, light availability, neighborhood basal area, and soil fertility were measured across 24 plots, and the relative effects of each measured variable, temperature, and precipitation on seedling density were quantified within a Bayesian multilevel regression model. Model results showed nonsignificant effects of climate, light availability, and neighborhood index on seedling density; a significant positive association between seedling density and the interaction between soil fertility and neighborhood index; and a strong negative relationship between seedling density and soil fertility. We posit that the negative association with soil fertility in these nutrient-poor forests reflects an underlying gradient in soil moisture availability that corresponds with water flux pathways. Ultimately, much of the variance in seedling densities was explained by latent plot and year effects, indicating that A. lasiocarpa establishment in this mixed-conifer forest is likely governed by a complex suite of environmental factors that vary across fine spatiotemporal scales
Halo Occupation Distribution Modeling of Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies
We perform Halo Occupation Distribution (HOD) modeling to interpret
small-scale and intermediate-scale clustering of 35,000 luminous early-type
galaxies and their cross-correlation with a reference imaging sample of normal
L* galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The modeling results show that
most of these luminous red galaxies (LRGs) are central galaxies residing in
massive halos of typical mass M ~ a few times 10^13 to 10^14 Msun/h, while a
few percent of them have to be satellites within halos in order to produce the
strong auto-correlations exhibited on smaller scales. The mean luminosity Lc of
central LRGs increases with the host halo mass, with a rough scaling relation
of Lc \propto M^0.5. The halo mass required to host on average one satellite
LRG above a luminosity threshold is found to be about 10 times higher than that
required to host a central LRG above the same threshold. We find that in
massive halos the distribution of L* galaxies roughly follows that of the dark
matter and their mean occupation number scales with halo mass as M^1.5. The HOD
modeling results also allows for an intuitive understanding of the
scale-dependent luminosity dependence of the cross-correlation between LRGs and
L_* galaxies. Constraints on the LRG HOD provide tests to models of formation
and evolution of massive galaxies, and they are also useful for cosmological
parameter investigations. In one of the appendices, we provide LRG HOD
parameters with dependence on cosmology inferred from modeling the two-point
auto-correlation functions of LRGs.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
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