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Review of: The Biogeography of Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains of California--A Historical Study. By Richard A. Minnich. University of California Publications in Geography Volume 28, University of California Press, Berkeley. 120 pp. plus plates, soft cover.
Review info: A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert. Edited by S. J. Phillips and P. W. Comus. 2000. Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Press, Tucson AZ, and University of California Press, Berkeley CA. 628 pp. Cloth ISBN 0-520-22029-3 Paper ISBN 0-520-21980-5.
Review of: Ecosystems of the World 8A. Natural Grasslands. Introduction and Western Hemisphere. Edited by Robert T. Coupland. Elsevier, New York, NY. xiii + 469 p. Hardcover, $217. ISBN 0444-88264-2.
Peniocereus striatus (Brandegee) Buxb. (Cactaceae) is an endemic Sonoran Desert cactus that reaches its northern range limit in southwestern Arizona. One U.S. population occupies a small area of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument near the U.S./Mexico international boundary, which has been monitored since 1939. An extensive survey conducted in 2002, covering 177 ha, resulted in the discovery of 88 new plants, in addition to the relocation of 57 plants found in previous surveys. Despite potential increases in population size and spatial distribution, mean plant height and number of basal stems has not significantly changed in recent years. Bud scars revealed that a majority of the population was sexually mature. Peniocereus striatus occurrence increased with decreasing slope, spanned every slope aspect, and was highest on rocky soils, but was noticeably low on west and northwest slopes and areas where severe land degradation had previously occurred. Over half of P. striatus plants were nursed by shrubs and subshrubs, while 40% occurred under leguminous trees. A severe frost in January 2002 top-killed 19% of the population, with the greatest damage in drainage bottoms. However, long-term (1944–2002) climate records show that there has been an overall increase in the number of frost free days in the region, which, coupled with land use change, has implications for the future health of this population.
Ceanothus bolensis S. Boyd & J. Keeley is a new species in the subgenus Cerastes from northwestern Baja California, Mexico. It is well represented at elevations above 1000 m on Cerro Bola, a basaltic peak approximately 35 km south of the U.S./Mexican border. It is characterized by small, obovate to oblanceolate, cupped, essentially glabrous leaves with sparsely toothed margins, pale blue flowers, and globose fruits lacking horns. Principal components analysis on morphological traits shows it to be distinct from other members of Cerastes which are distributed away from the coast in southern California and Baja California, Mexico. These phenetic comparisons also suggest that Ceanothus otayensis should not be subsumed under C. crassifolius , as treated in the Jepson Manual, but rather should be retained at specific rank as well.
A 2.1-m core from Laguna de las Trancas, a marsh atop a landslide in northern Santa Cruz County, California, has yielded a pollen record for the period between about 30,000 B. P. and roughly 5000 B. P. Three pollen zones are recognized. The earliest is characterized by high frequencies of pine pollen and is correlated with a mid-Wisconsinan interstade of the mid-continent. The middle zone contains high frequencies of both pine and fir (Abies, probably A. grandis) pollen and is correlated with the last full glacial interval (upper Wisconsinan). The upper zone is dominated by redwood (Sequoia) pollen and represents latest Pleistocene to middle Holocene. The past few thousand years are not represented in the core. The pollen evidence indicates that during the full glacial period the mean annual temperature at the site was about 2°C to 3°C lower than it is today. We attribute this small difference to the stabilizing effect of marine upwelling on the temperature regime in the immediate vicinity of the coast. Precipitation may have been about 20 percent higher as a result of longer winter wet seasons.
Effects of up to three successive spring and fall burns on composition and biomass of the predominantly non-native grasslands of the southern Sierra Nevada foothills were evaluated. Fall and spring burning regimes increased the number and biomass of both alien and native forb species. No native grass species became established following the treatments. Thus, whereas the biomass of alien grass species can be reduced by repeated burning, they will be replaced by increases in both alien and native forbs. Changes seen following one or two burns (spring or fall) were not sustained following cessation of burning treatment.
VTM (Vegetation Type Map) plots comprise a huge data set on vegetation composition for many parts of California collected mostly between 1929 and 1935. Historical changes in vegetation have been inferred by sampling these areas many decades later and evaluating the changes in plant dominance. VTM plots can not be precisely relocated, and it has been assumed that errors resulting from this problem are inconsequential or can be eliminated by comparison with a composite of multiple contemporary plots. This study examines that assumption for southern California shrubland landscapes by comparing the differences in species composition between closely positioned VTM-sized plots. Comparing shrub species density in 400-m² plots separated by 30 m (center to center), I found that all species exhibited considerable differences in density even over this short distance. This patchiness in shrub distribution could lead to major errors in historical reconstructions from VTM plot data. Two methods are proposed for dealing with this problem. One is to collect multiple samples from the vicinity of the VTM plot and use the observed spatial variation to set bounds on the temporal changes required to represent significant historical change. The other is to look at broad landscape changes reflected in the averages observed in a large sampling of sites.