Abstract
Preliminary survey of a riparian ecosystem along the Walnut River at Winfield, Cowley County, Kansas, revealed a woodland community whose canopy is dominated by hackberries, bitternut hickory, pecan, red mulberry, and two species of oaks. This association contrasts with the regional assemblage dominated by oak, walnut, and elm predicted for the Walnut River based on taxa recorded by the public land surveys of 1870-1871. Cowley County is near the distributional limit of a number of plants, and reorganization of the riverine community in part may be a result of natural changes in the distributions and abundances of some species in response to climatic fluctuation. Any natural change, however, is obscured by impacts of human land and resource use patterns and cultivar escapes. Natural and historical factors are causing unique new assemblages of plants to emerge in the region, which will have important implications for the conservation of native communities of plants and animals.
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Schedule a callMore From: Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science (1903-)
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