Long overdue!

It's been a month! Ridiculous. But I've read quite a bit over the break, since Audrey and I stayed in Boulder and most other people didn't- it's been nice and relaxing. I'll just list a bunch of the highlights....

Books: Alaska's Changing Boreal Forest (an LTER book). Stuart Chapin, et al.
Great resource. Balances hard science with good writing, which doesn't seem to be very common in books. Very interesting, especially the parts related to forest and permafrost dynamics. They have quite a bit on successional communities, but nothing on any multiple disturbance sites. Also has some interesting info on fire patterns in Alaska. Quite well cited, no real complaints.

Canada's Boreal Forest, J. D. Henry, Smithsonian Press.
A lighter read, more literary, but still cited and grounded. I read through it expecting a little more ecology, but the strength of the book really lies in the cultural issues associated with resource extraction and climate change. Light enough to read for a break from the LTER book, so it was a nice complement. Not a resource for research, however.

Some papers:
Development of a large area biodiversity monitoring system driven by remote sensing. Duro et al. 2007. Progress in Physical Geography
-More of a project proposal, these folks are trying to get a system set up for monitoring northern Canada (and Alaska, basically) for changes in biodiversity, disturbance patterns, etc. It's not entirely a clear proposal, and it seems more like an idea-sheet than an actual plan at this point. I'm going to reread it and see what else I can get out of it after the first read.

Non-equilibrium succession dynamics indicate continued northern migration of lodgepole pine. Johnstone and Chapin, 2003. Global Change Biology.
-An interesting proposal. They argue that lodgepole pines are still moving north post-glacial period. There's a couple interesting thoughts about this- anthropogenic climate change isn't the driving force behind lodgepole's movements north, and most models are based on static assumptions (the pines live where the pines can live), but if the distribution is moving north and that movement is not tied to a changing climate, then those assumptions are incorrect. (They also assume that plant species migrate individualistically, which I disagree with. Plants migrate according to their local and distributional environment- they move to where they can live. But a plants potential habitat is not just the abiotic factors like temperature and climate, which this paper and most other models assume, a plant's potential habitat must also take into account the biotic factors too. In other words, plants may TRY and migrate individualistically, but their success is tied to a community migrating (or a suitable, but different, community existing elsewhere)). Another issue with their conclusion is the potential for some source-sink population effects going on- there's not any evidence presented which shows that these new stands of lodgepole springing up after disturbance in spruce forests are going to survive, reproduce, and spread the species north- could be a sink population, or a less viable population anyway, leading to a more ragged edge to lodgepole distribution but not necessarily a moving-north distribution.

Extending community ecology to landscapes. Urban, et al. 2002. Ecoscience.
-Decent paper which explores sampling problems related to doing community ecology on a landscape level. All in all, they look into some interesting ways to calculate sample sites and sample number, including randomized ideal with planned sites to match that ideal on a logistically possible level.

Biogeography and landscape ecology. M. Kent. 2007. Progress in Physical Geography.
Landscape ecology: What is the state of the state. M. Turner. 2005. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Sys.


There were/are many more, but I'll leave those for now.

Any recommendations?