|
The boundary between forest and tundra in mountainous areas, alpine treeline, is expected to advance as climate warming continues and change is likely to be pronounced in northern latitudes. I studied the white spruce ( Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) treeline in the Kluane region of southwest Yukon, Canada, with the objectives of: (i) characterizing its responses to past climate change, and (ii) assessing the influence of different environmental variables on spruce growth and treeline dynamics. Four investigations were conducted, each employing fundamentally different methodologies and occupying distinct levels within a hierarchical, scale-based, analytical framework. At the landscape scale, I mapped spruce distribution...
|
The St. Elias region of North America occupies portions of British Columbia, Alaska, and the Yukon Territory and comprises a network of public lands and protected areas managed by a variety of agencies. This thesis characterizes and analyzes the broadscale, or regional, ecology of these lands and provides an assessment of the implications this has for ecosystem-based management--particularly as it relates to intergovernmental cooperation. A multi-stage, map-based, multidisciplinary process is used to synthesize information on the region's physical, biological, and institutional environments. The fields of conservation biology and landscape ecology provide theoretical foundations for analysis. The ecological synthesis...
|
|