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The following publications have resulted from work conducted or supported by the Great Lakes Inventory and Monitoring Program in Network parks, or they represent professional contributions made by Network staff, both in the Great Lakes Network parks and beyond.Anderson, C., E. Epstein, D. Feldkirchner, and W. Smith. 2008. Biotic inventory and analysis of the Flambeau River State Forest: A baseline inventory and analysis of natural communities, rare plants, and animals. Natural Heritage Inventory Program, Bureau of Endangered Resources, Department of Natural Resources, Madison, Wisconsin. PUBL ER-808 2008.
J. Elias (GLKN) was a contributing author for the bird information included in this report.
The Flambeau River State Forest Biotic Inventory was a multiple-year project to survey and analyze selected natural resources of the Flambeau River State Forest and select nearby areas. The Natural Heritage Inventory (NHI) Program, part of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ Bureau of Endangered Resources, conducted the inventory in cooperation with the Division of Forestry. Project goals were to provide baseline information on rare species, high-quality natural communities, significant aquatic features, and the overall ecology of the Flambeau River State Forest (FRSF). This report will provide an ecological context for the property and its natural features and highlight opportunities to conserve biological diversity. A biotic inventory is one of several assessments identified as critical for developing a state forest master plan. Belant, J. L., T. W. Seamans, and D. Paetkau. 2007. Genetic tagging free-ranging white-tailed deer using hair snares. Ohio Journal of Science 107:50-56.
Use of noninvasive DNA-based tissue sampling (e.g., hair, scats) for individual identification on wildlife studies has increased markedly in recent years. Although field techniques for collecting hair samples have been developed for several species, we are unaware of their use with free-ranging ungulates. From December 2004 to August 2005 we evaluated the efficacy of barbed wire for snaring hair samples suitable for genetic analyses from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginanus) on trails and at baited sites. During initial trials on a semi-captive deer herd in northern Ohio, deer demonstrated avoidance of barbed wire positioned on game trails through four weeks but entered baited sites with barbed wire in <3 days. Field trails on free-ranging deer in Michigan using two snare configurations at baited sites checked at one-or-two-week intervals also were successful in obtaining hair samples suitable for extracting DNA. Number of hair samples appeared to increase with deer activity. Number of hair samples and amount of hair in individual samples were greater during winter and spring than during summer. Adequate genetic material was present in 98% (n=53) of samples collected during winter. Obtaing hair samples noninvasively from white-tailed deer has numerous applications including determing natal origin, four-point, barbed wire 80 cm above ground attached to ->3 trees. In treeless areas, metal or wood posts could be substituted. Hair snare height and configuration could be adapted for other ungulate species.
Bennett, J. P. In press. Elemental tissue concentrations of Cladonia lichens as indicators of regional air pollution patterns in the north-central United States. U.S Geological Survey and University of Wisconsin.
Bioindication of biological effects of air pollution at regional scales is a challenging problem requiring large and extensive sampling. In previous studies sampling has been done on a grid regardless of the location of sample points; used multiple species; and/or been limited to a few types of sources, usually point sources. In this study we used study areas deliberately located in pristine areas and one urban area, one bioindicator genus, and included gaseous, particulate and mineral resources point and non-point sources to characterize potential impacts in the upper Midwestern U.S. Combining tissue concentrations of 23 elements in Cladonia lichen samples from 11 study areas in this region, and emission densities of multiple pollutants and mineral resource extraction sources in a canonical correspondence analysis we were able to identify sources and effects of air pollutants. We succeeded in this in spite of the lack of spatial structure in the data, by finding correlation structure in a large data set.
Bennett, J. P. 2008. Discrimination of lichen genera and species using element concentrations. Lichenologist 40:135-151.
The importance of organic chemistry in the classification of lichens is well established, but inorganic chemistry has been largely overlooked. Six lichen species growing in 11 protected areas of the northern Great Lakes ecoregion not greatly influenced by anthropogenic particulates or gaseous air pollutants were studied over a period of 23 years. The elemental data from these studies were aggregated in order to test the hypothesis that differences among species in tissue element concentrations were large enough to discriminate between taxa faithfully. Concentrations of 16 chemical elements that were found in tissue samples from Cladonia rangiferina, Evernia mesomorpha, Flavopunctelia flaventior, Hypogymnia physodes, Parmelia sulcata, and Punctelia rudecta were analyzed statistically using multivariate discriminant functions and CART analyses, as well as t-tests. Genera and species were clearly separated in element space, and elemental discriminant functions were able to classify 91–100 of the samples correctly into species. At the broadest level, a Zn concentration of 51 ppm in tissues of four of the lichen species effectively discriminated foliose from fruticose species. Similarly, a S concentration of 680 ppm discriminated C. rangiferina and E. mesomorpha, and a Ca concentration of 10,436 ppm discriminated H. physodes from P. sulcata. For the three parmelioid species, a Ca concentration >32,837 ppm discriminated Punctelia rudecta from the other two species, while a Zn concentration of 56 ppm discriminated Parmelia sulcata from F. flaventior. Foliose species also had higher concentrations than did fruticose species of all elements except Na. Elemental signatures for each of the six species were developed using standardized means. Twenty-four mechanisms explaining the differences among species are summarized. Finally, the relationships of four species based on element concentrations, using additive-trees clustering of a Euclidean-distance matrix, produced identical relationships as did analyses based on secondary product chemistry that used additive-trees clustering of a Jaccard similarity matrix. At least for these six species, element composition has taxonomic significance, and may be useful for discriminating other taxa.
Bennett, J. P. 2007. Twenty-four years of Great Lakes lichen studies provide park biomonitoring baselines.Natural Resource Year in Review—2006. Pages 39–40 in J. Selleck, editor. Natural Resource Year in Review—2006. Publication D-1859. National Park Service, Denver, CO.
Lichens were studied as biomonitors and bioindicators of air quality with the Great Lakes national parks. Of the twelve parks in the National Park Service's Great Lakes Network, the author makes a distinction of parks either to the north or south of 46o latitude. North of this latitude the average number of lichen species is 180 per park; and south of this latitude are seven parks averaging 390 species per park.
Bowen, K. D., E. A. Beever, and U. B. Gafvert. 2009. Improving the design of amphibian surveys using soil data: A case study in two wilderness areas. Natural Areas Journal 29 (2):117-125.
Amphibian populations are known or thought to be declining worldwide. Although protected natural areas may act as reservoirs of biological integrity and serve as benchmarks for comparison with unprotected areas, they are not immune from population declines and extinctions and should be monitored. Unfortunately, identifying survey sites and performing long-term fieldwork within such (often remote) areas involves a special set of problems. We used the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service Soil Survey Geographic (SSURGO) Database to identify , a priori, potential habitat for aquatic-breeding amphibians on North and South Manitou Islands, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan, USA, and compared the results to those obtained using National Wetland Inventory (NWI) approach, and identified more small and ephemeral wetlands. Field surveys used a combination of daytime call surveys, nighttime call surveys, and perimeter surveys. We found that sites that would not have been identified with NWI data often contained amphibians and, in one case, contained wetland-breeding species that would not have been found using NWI data. Our technique allows for easy a priori identification of numerous survey sites that might not be identified using other sources of spatial information. We recognize, however, that the most effective site identification and survey techniques will likely use a combination of methods in addition to those described here.
Bowen, K. D., S. D. McMahon, and E. A. Beever. 2007. Elaphe vulpina (Western Fox Snake). Herpetological Review 38:486.
Documentation of a new species record for North Manitou Island and the eastern Lake Michigan archipelago.
Custer, T. W., K. Kannan, L. Tao, A. R. Saxena, and B. Route. 2009. Perfluorinated compunds and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in great blue heron eggs from Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana. Journal of Great Lakes Research 35 (2009):401-405.
In 1993, great blue heron (Ardea herodias) eggs were collected from Indianan Dunes National Lakeshore, IN, and analyzed for organochlorine pesticides (OCs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, and selenium. In 2007, archived samples from these eggs were analyzed for perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and reanalyzed for OCs and PCBs. Concentrations of 10 OCs and PCBs did not significantly differ after 14 years of storage. Perflourinated compounds were detected in all eggs. Most concentrations of perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), the major contributor to total PFC concentrations, were near or above a threshold (100 ng PFOS/g wet wt.) associated with reduced hatching success in white leghorn chickens (Gallus domesticus). However, it is not known whether great blue heron embryos are as sensitive as chickens or whether effects of PFOS injected into chicken eggs are comparable to biologically incorporated PFOS. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers were detected in all eggs. The ranking of PBDE congener concentrations was PBDE-47> -99>-100>-153>-154>-28>-183. This pattern is consistent with the contributions from Penta PBDE formulation. Total PBDE concentrations in great blue heron eggs from Indiana Dunes were more than five times greater than total PBDE concentrations in great blue heron eggs collected from the southwest coast of British Columbia in 1993. The higher PDBE concentrations in Indiana Dunes probably reflect local contamination from the highly urbanized and industrialized inputs into Lake Michigan. Polybrominated diphenyl either concentrations were within levels associated with altered reproductive behavior in other avian species.
Dykstra, C. R., W. T. Route, M. W. Meyer, and P. W. Rasmussen. 2010. Contaminant concentrations in bald eagles nesting on Lake Superior, the upper Mississippi River, and the St. Croix River. Journal of Great Lakes Research 36 (2010):561-569.
We measured concentrations of DDE, total PCBs, and mercury in bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) nestlings at three locations in the upper Midwest: Lake Superior, the upper Mississippi River, and the St. Croix River, 2006–2008. We also analyzed trends in concentrations of these contaminants for eagles on the southern shore of Lake Superior, from 1989 to 2008, using the current and previously published data. Concentrations of DDE in nestling blood plasma samples were greatest on Lake Superior (geometric mean: 16.2 µg/kg, n=29), whereas concentrations of total PCBs were highest in Mississippi River samples (88.6 µg/kg, n=51). Mercury concentrations were highest along the upper St. Croix River (6.81 µg/g wet weight in feathers, n =19). For Lake Superior, DDE concentrations declined significantly in nestling blood plasma samples from 1989 to 2008, an average of 3.0% annually. Similarly, total PCBs in Lake Superior eaglets decreased 4.0% annually from 1989 to 2008, and mercury concentrations in nestling feathers from Lake Superior nests also decreased significantly from 1991 to 2008, 2.4% per year. With the possible exception of mercury on the upper St. Croix River, mean concentrations in 2006–2008 of all three compounds were below levels associated with significant impairment of reproduction for all sites, and reproductive rates at all three sites averaged N1.2 young per occupied territory, which is greater than the rate indicative of a healthy population.
Gimmi, U., T. J. Schmidt, C. Hawbaker, C. Alcantara, U. Gafvert, and V. C. Radeloff. In press. Decreasing effectiveness of protected areas due to increasing development in the surroundings of U.S. National Park Service holdings after park establishment. Submitted to Ecological Applications, September 2008.
Protected areas are cornerstones of biodiversity conservation, but protected areas are in danger of becoming islands in a sea of human dominated landscapes. It has been hypothesized that protected areas may even foster development in their surrounding area by providing specific amenities, thus partially causing the isolation that limits their functioning. The objective of our study was to assess road development and building growth within and around Indiana Dunes and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshores in the U.S. Great Lakes region before and since the establishment of these two parks in 1966 and estimate the effects of park creation on changes in landscape patterns. Roads and buildings were mapped for 1938, 1966 and 2005 from historic aerial photographs and topographical maps for both the park area and a 3.2 km buffer zone around each park. U.S. census housing density data from 1940 to 2000 were used as a baseline to compare observed changes with those in the broader landscape. Additionally, we applied morphological image processing to quantify the effects of building growth and road development on landscape fragmentation. Our results show that park establishment was effective in reducing and stopping the fragmenting impact of development within park boundaries. However, increased amenity levels following park establishment led to enhanced development in the 3.2 km buffer of both parks. In the extreme case of Indiana Dunes, building density outside the park increased from 45 to 200 buildings/km2 and road density almost doubled from 3.6 to 6.6 km/km2 from 1938 to 2005. The rates of change in this area were found to be much higher than in the broader landscape, particularly after park establishment. The potential amenity effect was up to 26,000 new buildings in the 3.2 km buffer zone around Indiana Dunes between 1966 and 2005. For Pictured Rocks the absolute effect was smaller but still half of the observed building growth was potentially due to amenity effects. Our findings highlight the need for conservation planning at broader scales, incorporating areas beyond the boundaries of protected areas.
Gostomski, T., and J. Marr. 2007. Island Life: An Isle Royale Nature Guide. Isle Royale Natural History Association, Houghton, MI.
This book brings together and updates the separate mammal, fish, reptile, amphibian, bird, tree, and wildflower guides for Isle Royale National Park. It is a non-technical guide, written for the park visitor.
Johnson, S. E., E. L. Mudrak, E. A. Beever, S. Sanders, and D. M. Waller. 2008. Comparing power among three sampling methods for monitoring forest vegetation. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 38:143-156.
We compared three methods of sampling forest vegetation for their ability to reliably estimate changes in species richness, plant abundance, and overstory basal area and composition. Methods include the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) method and two other methods being considered for use in monitoring National Parks in the Northern Great Lakes ecoregion. All methods were successful at detecting changes in composite variables but lacked sufficient enough power to detect a 20% change in the abundance of most individual species. All three methods had high power for detecting changes in overstory tree communities but differed greatly in their ability to track shifts in understory composition and diversity. Although complete walk-through surveys of all species present provided adequate power for tracking changes in diversity, sampling only 12 ground layer quadrats limited the power of the FIA method. Methods that sample the understory more intensively provide a better balance of sampling effort and provide higher power to detect changes in forest understory communities. Aggregating data across sites of similar habitat also provides more powerful estimates of change.
Lindsay, A. R., and J. L. Belant. 2008. A simple and improved PCR-based technique for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) sex identification. Conservation Genetics 9:443-447.
We describe a simple single-reaction technique for identifying the sex of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) based on the PCR amplification of a zinc-finger intron using one pair of primers. Although Sry-coamplification confirmed sex identities, use of the Sry marker was unnecessary due to dimorphic alleles on the X and Y chromosomes at the zinc-finger locus. Insertions in intron 7 of the Y-linked allele (417 bp) make it nearly twice as long as the X-linked allele (236 bp) and thus the amplification products are easily discernable by simple agarose gel electrophoresis. The relatively short size of these products makes them useful for DNA-based sex identification from potentially low-yield tissue samples (e.g., hair, feces). This technique will provide ecologists, conservation geneticists and wildlife managers with a mechanism to readily and reliably identify the sex of unknown white-tailed deer tissue samples, and likely similar samples from other cervid species.
Mudrack, E. L., S. E. Johnson, and D. M. Waller. In press. Forty-seven years of changes in vegetation at Apostle Islands: Effects of deer on forest understory. Natural Areas Journal.
No abstract available at this time.
Romanski, M., J.A. Vucetich, R.O. Peterson, D.W. Smith, P.C. Shelton. In press. Double-count surveys and unexpectedly misleading estimates of sightability for beaver (Castor canadensis) lodges. Submitted to Candadian J. Zoology, March 2009
No abstract available at this time.
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