Publications

In 1991, the National Park Service (NPS) selected seven parks to serve as prototypes for development of a long-term ecological monitoring program. Denali National Park and Preserve was one of the prototype parks selected. The principal focus of this national program was to detect and document resource changes and to understand the forces driving those changes. One of the major tasks of...

Measures of repeatability have long been used to assess patterns of variation in egg size within and among females. We compared different analytical approaches for estimating repeatability of egg size of Black Brant. Separate estimates of repeatability for eggs of each clutch size and laying sequence number varied from 0.49 to 0.64. We suggest that using the averaging egg size within...

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No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Recently, researchers emphasized that patterns of stable isotope ratios observed at the individual level are a result of an interaction between ecological, physiological, and biochemical processes. Isotopic models for herbivores provide additional complications because those mammals consume foods that have high variability in nitrogen concentrations. In addition, distribution of amino...

For an ecological monitoring program to be successful over the long-term, the perceived benefits of the information must justify the cost. Financial limitations will always restrict the scope of a monitoring program, hence the program's focus must be carefully prioritized. Clearly identifying the costs and benefits of a program will assist in this prioritization process, but this is...

Seasonal properties of vegetation covering northern boreal and arctic landscapes are considered important as input to numerous climate change studies. In this study, multitemporal phenological characteristics of Alaskan vegetation were studied for the State as a whole, and 19 of 20 ecoregions were studied using seasonally truncated, composited advanced very high resolution radiometer...

We studied nutrient reserve dynamics of female Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis) to identify sources of intraspecific variation in strategies of nutrient acquisition for meeting the high nutritional and energetic costs of egg formation. We collected data from interior Alaska and combined these with data for Lesser Scaup from midcontinent breeding areas (Afton and Ankney 1991), allowing a...

Archiving biological and environmental samples for retrospective analysis is a major component of systematic environmental monitoring. The long-term storage of carefully selected, representative samples in an environmental specimen bank is an important complement to the real-time monitoring of the environment. These archived samples permit:The use of subsequently developed innovative...

Parent black-legged kittiwakes (Rissa tridactyla) and their dependent chicks respond to food shortages by increasing circulating levels of corticosterone. To examine the behavioral significance of corticosterone release, we experimentally increased levels of circulating corticosterone in parents and chicks up to the levels observed during food shortages. We found that corticosterone...

The Dungeness crab, Cancer magister, supports an important fishery in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, yet there is limited knowledge of ovigerous female brooding locations and brooding behavior. Our earlier research suggests that ovigerous crabs aggregate at the same brooding locations for many years. Within these locations, ovigerous females occur in high densities, with the majority of...