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ch are mainly christmas themed eat home made cinnamon rolls unapologetically ripped off from cinnabon i make these every year around this time and they will destroy your diet drink a christmas cranberry mojito looks easy enough to mix up and very seasonal must be a cranberry fan watch my favorite recent christmas movie is arthur christmas it looked terrible in previews but that s mostly because hollywood has no idea how to market british movies here it s actually adorable and hysterical and not too sappy if you re in the mood for something stronger go for the original die hard it counts as a christmas movie cook a christmas goose i ve never done it but i feel we should definitely bring back the goose as a holiday meal option we just had turkey at thanksgiving let s try something different here are some tips on goose roasting make bored of regular paper snowflakes geek it up by trying your hand at these doctor who and star wars snowflakes posted in uncategorized very chilly cushions a common plant adaptation to life in the cold december 20 2012 6 comments silene acaulis moss campion a nearly ubiquitous alpine arctic cushion plant in the northern hemisphere molenda 2012 i am not sure why but lately i ve been thinking a lot about how plants adapt to extremes of cold both in the arctic and the alpine regions i m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that it s been between 14 17 f the past few nights making our uninsulated bedroom a toasty 35 f there are a bunch of interesting and unique adaptations of arctic and alpine plants which in fact are often the same thing and i plan to provide an overview of those in an upcoming post today however i just want to cover one adaptation that is extremely common in the tundra especially in the very harshest parts cushion plants a cushion plant is not a plant from any particularly family or genus cushion refers to the growth form the plant takes and species of plants over a very wide range of groups at least 30 families have adapted this growth mode in cold short seasoned climates in and around alpine regions worldwide as well as the arctic and antarctic if you get high up almost any mountain range both above and approaching timberline you will notice that many of the small forbs you begin to see tend to grow very close to each other in clumps these clumps are usually vaguely circular and ofter appear puffy like a pillow though not more than a few inches above the soil while there are plenty of mat forming plants in warmer climes these unique cushions are found almost exclusively in alpine subalpine environments or arctic subarctic ones cushions typically consist of many smaller plants which may be vegetative clones of each other or may be genetically distinct but are often treated as a single organism clearly the plants derive some serious benefit from this behavior but what on earth could crowding each other in a resource limited habitat do to help them they aren t like penguins who generate their own heat and huddle together to share warmth a cold plant plus another cold plant generally equals two cold plants note some plants actually do generate heat but they are not alpine plants rather they tend to be early spring plants and oddly tropical plants but their genius is in their shape and density azorella compacta yareta a very common cushion plant of the andean highlands the dome like shape which the cushions tend to take made possible by an adaptation that makes all the plants in the clump grow upward at the same rate so no one plant is high above all the others and the closeness with which those plants grow makes these clumps perfect heat traps the temperature on or inside a cushion can be up to 15 c more than the air temperature above it the cushions are able to retain heat radiating up from the soil as well as absorbing heat from the sun a very dense large clump of green can get surprisingly warm on a sunny day at high altitude add to that the fact that the wind speed in and around a cushion can be cut by up to 98 from open areas you have a perfect recipe to prevent heat loss many alpine cushion plants also have very hairy leaves which trap even more heat within this allows the plants to maintain a relatively stable warmer than average microclimate that is resistant to sudden changes in weather and temperature outside such as freezing temperatures at night or sudden storms interestingly enough this stabilizing effect can also be a benefit when it gets too hot out maintaining lower temperatures against baking sunshine the benefits of a cushion like growth form at high altitudes go beyond just heat retention and wind protection they also extend to increasing soil moisture and nutrition in the area beneath the cushion cushion plants like most alpine plants have a large deep taproot because alpine soils often drain quickly and are poor in nutrients a long root system is important for the plant to be able to reach enough water and nutrition most alpine plants are perennial and die back to their roots in fall having to exist on stored resources throughout the 10 month dormant season and a thick taproot can help with that in addition in a place with high winds snow and not a lot of other plants around a good anchor is vital cushion plants have the advantage of having a root system that is not just deep but also extensive consisting of one or more taproots and a network of entangled smaller roots closer to the surface these help trap water and nutrients where the plant can get at them and the dense cover provided by the cushion drastically cuts evaporation this is not an insignificant effect some research has shown that soil moisture in cushion sites can be increased up to 70 above non cushion sites and available nitrogen up to 90 the mean community composition estimates for plants and arthropods associated with cushion plants silene acaulis and open non cushion vegetated microsites note how the cushion positively effects all measurements except in this case diversity of plants molenda 2012 cushion plants often start out by colonizing completely bare soil in the harshest of climates as you can imagine the process of getting started without any existing buffering cushion is a little bit problematic so new cushion establishment is actually rather rare that s okay though because depending on the species a single cushion can reach up 350 years old and some andean species are claimed to have reached 3 000 the cushion grows very slowly much more so than lower elevation plants but can eventually reach up 3 m in diameter cushion species also tend to have very large showy flowers often strongly smelling for their small size which may bloom all at once attracting a greater number of pollinators than if they had smaller flowers or grew more sparsely as you can imagine all these factors contribute to making these cushions ideal microclimates in a very inhospitable habitat what s really interesting is that although cushions of the same plant may reach from the subalpine or even montane habitat to well past timberline and onto nearly bare windswept ridges the general conditions inside the cushion remain fairly constant so at a lower altitude the relative difference in conditions from open ground may not be very large but as the environment becomes higher and colder and windier conditions in the cushion will be vastly different while still resembling conditions inside the lower altitude cushion of the same species the desirable microclimate created by the cushion is not just desirable for the plant itself in fact these plants have been shown to provide habitat for other plants which shelter under the canopy of the cushion as well as a variety of microorganisms and arthropods studies on various species of cushion plant around the world have shown that depending on the type of plant and the location cushion plants may improve species diversity richness or evenness often all three when compared to a similar site with no cushion this has led to cushion plants being variously known as nurse plants ecosystem engineers and foundation species all these terms have different exact meanings but in general refer to a species that alters its environment in such a way that is beneficial or even vital for a number of other species or individuals in that ecosystem in fact the higher up slope you go and the more relative difference between conditions in and outside of the cushion the more important to other species cushion plants seem to be works consulted badano e and cavieres l 2006 impacts of ecosystem engineers on community attributes effects of cushion plants at different elevations of the chilean andes diversity and distributions 12 4 388 396 cavieres l arroyo m t k peñaloza a molina montenegro m and torres c 2002 nurse effect of bolax gummifera cushion plants in the alpine vegetation of the chilean patagonian andes journal of vegetation science 13 547 554 cavieres l badano e sierra almieda a and molina montenegro m 2007 microclimatic modifications of cushion plants and their consequences for seedling survival of native and non native herbaceous species in the high andes of central chile arctic antarctic and alpine research 39 2 229 236 molenda o reid a lortie cj 2012 the alpine cushion plant silene acaulis as foundation species a bug s eye view to facilitation and microclimate plos one 7 5 e37223 morris w and doak d 1998 life history of the long lived gynodioecious cushion plant silene acaulis caryophyllaceae inferred from size based population projection matrices american journal of botany 85 6 784 793 posted in alpine arctic ecology botany community ecology flowers local ecology mutualism plant ecology old bones new conservation tool december 19 2012 1 comment let me start out by saying i love yellowstone national park it is easily my favorite place i ve ever been to so i m always excited when new research comes out of yellowstone particular when it s research that could mean a lot for conservation in the park and elsewhere a recent paper in ecology by josh miller outlines a new method of using bone assemblages of elk in yellowstone as a means of discovering things about the population both in time how the population changes over decades and space how the animals use the resources available to them while the yellowstone ecosystem has been very heavily studied especially for the last 20 30 years there are still plenty of gaps in the data particular in terms of historical records about any given species it s important to understand as long a span of history about a population as is possible so that you can tell if short term changes in a population s structure abundance or movements are just a natural fluctuation or indicative of a trend or permanent shift the better the historical data the better conservationists can accurately determine how to manage a population and know whether it s in trouble the problem is the kind of decades long multi generational studies required to gather this kind of data are hard to get funded and difficult to maintain over the careers of perhaps several researchers and even if a very long term study starts now that doesn t help provide historical data from a hundred years ago or more so conservation ecologists try to find other methods to learn about the habits of previous generations of populations such as looking at soil cores but it can be hard to find a method that is reliable across the board particularly for different species in addition large migratory mammals present a special challenge because scientists need to know their seasonal movements as well as the population structure when reading the paper i was surprised at how seemingly simple the concept behind it was and that it hadn t been thought of until recently scientists have used bone assemblages previously to determine things about the structure and abundance of a population but using them to learn about populations over a long period or their seasonal movements is a pretty new idea and one that had never been tested on a large north american mammal before miller didn t originally set out to study modern ecosystems or develop a new tool for conservation he s a paleontologist by training and was originally looking for a reliable way to estimate population size of certain dinosaurs based on the fossil record to do this he needed to compare a live population of large animals to the bones they left behind and come up with some kind of ratio that could be applied to extinct animals but once he started studying ungulates he realized that there was much more data in the bones that was not being put to use part of the reason for this is that bones have generally been considered only to persist a short time in nature but in fact they can hang around on the surface for decades to more than a century in addition it s fairly easy to tell approximately how old a bone is by its rate of weathering antler and neonatal bone concentrations within the study area miller 2012 in this study 1 km square plots were established in 4 different habitats grassland lake margin conifer forest and river margin across the study area without regard for any current data on elk migration or use of certain areas researchers walked a set transect line though the study plots recording every bone of every kind they could see the main area of interest to this particular study were the antlers shed by male elk during the winter and the bones of recently born baby elk the reasons for this is that there is an abundance of both all males shed their antlers and the infant mortality rate for elk can be upwards of 80 and that both of these say something specific about the elk s seasonal habits antlers are a clue to the elk s annual wintering grounds and an abundance of calf bones points to the seasonal calving areas both major yearly events that dictate the animals migratory patterns surveys were conducted three years running and then the data on antlers and neonatal bones were compared with aerial surveys of live elk over a decade it was found that the bone assemblages can accurately delineate elk wintering and calving grounds by using the bone concentration to estimate the expected number of live elk found there in fact for bull elk wintering grounds the method was found to be even more consistently accurate than live aerial surveys comparison of survey methods for bull elk wintering grounds miller 2012 the reason this is so exciting is that not only is there now a useful method for prediction a modern population s use of the land through bone assemblages but it allows scientists to study how the land use has changed over time bone assemblages from the past where no or few live elk or recent remains are found means that the animals habits have changed live surveys provide a snap shot of what is happening in a particular season and when combined over several years or decades provide a short term view of populations changes bone assemblages are averaged o...
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