Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Patterns in coastal marsh vegetation of the Juneau area, Alaska

Public Deposited

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/s1784q21g

Descriptions

Attribute NameValues
Creator
Abstract
  • A vegetation study was made of four coastal marshes near Juneau, Alaska. Results confirmed earlier studies' findings in southeast Alaska that communities or assemblages of species can be identified but from marsh to marsh these assemblages appear to have no consistent relationship to each other or to environmental "factors" such as elevation and salinity. Further, marshes of the Juneau area vary in assemblage composition and assemblages vary in species composition within and among marshes. This variability apparently results from individualistic behavior of plant species. An individualistic interpretation of these results may explain plant populations behaviors but not the behavior of vegetation as a collective unit. Also, it makes comparison of marshes impossible because the comparison must be based on inconsistent species composition and inconsistent spatial arrangement of species and vegetation units. The explanation of the behavior of coastal marsh vegetation in the Juneau area lies in the integration of behaviors of physiography, species, and assemblages of species. Physiography is the integration of "site factors," species are the integration of populations, and vegetation is the integration of species' interactions. Site physiography thus defines the habitat, and the integration of plants and habitat at a site is the habitat-vegetation complex. The collection of complexes in a landscape forms a pattern of patches in which the complexes serve as species and materials pools for each other and for the surrounding patterns. The composition and structure (spatial arrangement) of the present complexes are its realized capacity, the result of site history and species-and-vegetation history. The nature of future habitat-vegetation complexes will be the outcome of site processes and species-and-vegetation processes. This future incorporates all possible outcomes of all possible combinations of processes and represents the potential capacities of the habitat-vegetation complex. This scheme makes possible the explanation of the history and future of vegetation and comparison of coastal marsh sites and vegetation in terms of history and process without requiring specification of species composition or endpoint of vegetation development.
Resource Type
Date Available
Date Issued
Degree Level
Degree Name
Degree Field
Degree Grantor
Commencement Year
Advisor
Committee Member
Academic Affiliation
Non-Academic Affiliation
Subject
Rights Statement
Publisher
Peer Reviewed
Language
Digitization Specifications
  • File scanned at 300 ppi (Monochrome, 256 Grayscale) using Capture Perfect 3.0 on a Canon DR-9050C in PDF format. CVista PdfCompressor 4.0 was used for pdf compression and textual OCR.
Replaces

Relationships

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details StoneCatherineS1984.pdf 2017-08-23 Public Download