Tufts Of Grass Research Articles

Resource selection at fine scale: what drives the decision of a generalist herbivore?

Abstract Spatial patterns in topography and forage distribution significantly influence the movements and choices of large herbivores. However, understanding the foraging strategies of free-grazing herbivores at different temporal and spatial scales remains limited, as different behavioral decisions can apply at different hierarchical levels. This study investigates the fine-scale foraging strategies of the Plains Zebra (Equus quagga) in a South African savanna, with a specific focus on their selection of green vegetation at the plant and feeding patch levels. We used the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index as a proxy for vegetation productivity and quality. Our findings reveal that zebras adapted their foraging strategies according to scale and season. During the late-dry season and early-wet season, selection for greenness was at both the grass tuft and feeding site levels. In contrast, during the mid-dry season, selection was predominantly at the tuft level, focusing solely on greenness. These insights emphasize the importance of conducting multilevel studies when investigating factors influencing foraging decisions. Findings at 1 hierarchical level may not necessarily apply across other levels of investigation, highlighting the need for a nuanced and comprehensive approach to understanding the complex foraging behaviors of animals.

Microclimatic buffering in forest, agricultural, and urban landscapes through the lens of a grass‐feeding insect

AbstractFor small ectotherm species, dealing with microclimatic variation during sensitive stages of their development is a critical component of their ecological interactions within and among different landscape settings. However, it is often unknown whether the use of habitats in different landscape settings may affect microclimatic conditions at the level of microhabitats (e.g., at host plants for herbivorous insects). As opposed to standard ecological monitoring experiments, we aim to identify the microclimatic variables that accurately represent the environment in which a small arthropod spends most of its life. As a case study, we selected grassy sites that corresponded to the microhabitat of grass‐feeding insects in general, and larvae of the butterfly Pararge aegeria in particular, as this insect recently expanded its habitat use from forest (edges) to agricultural and urban environments. We tested the extent to which local microclimates and microclimatic buffering capacity differed between tufts of grass in forest and in two anthropogenic (i.e., agricultural and urban) landscape settings by measuring microclimatic variables with sensors at the level of the grasses. We compared temperature, relative humidity, and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) during an exceptionally warm and dry summer period with parallel data from weather stations and tested for differences between microclimatic profiles among the three landscape settings. Microclimatic conditions correspond only partly to variables based on weather station data. Differences are particularly significant for relative humidity and VPD, but not for day and night temperatures. Effects of canopy openness on the variability of microclimatic variables are landscape‐specific. Host plants in agricultural settings experience strong microclimatic fluctuations and low short‐term variability in VPD. In urban settings, urban heat island effects increase night temperature but also show microclimatic buffering effects similar to the ones in forest settings. Our findings stress the functional implications of landscape‐specific microclimatic profiles at the appropriate organism‐centered scale. We discuss the significance of such microclimatic profiles for ecological studies dealing with ectotherms under climate and land use change.

Ant nests effect on organic matter, carbon, and nitrogen flux in the soil under grasses tufts in Lamto savannah (Côte d'Ivoire)

AbstractAnts are known to contribute to the physical and chemical improvement of the soil. In this context, the hypothesis put forward is that ants improve the nitrogen (N) supplementation necessary to ensure the high primary production measured in the Lamto savannah. Recent investigations in the humid savannah ecosystem showed that ant nests’ association with perennial grasses enhances their growth, productivity, and microorganism activity. This study aimed at understanding the effect of ant nests on organic matter (OM), carbon (C), and N flux beneath grass tufts. Under each grass tuft chosen to carry out this study, soil samples were taken from the depths of 0–10 cm using an auger at shrubby, clear grassy, and transitional grassy savannah. The analytical method by incineration of the loss on fire was used to determine the OM amount. The Kjeldahl method was used to determine the total N amount in the soil under grass tufts. The results showed that these components’ amount is higher beneath grass tufts associated with ant nests than those not associated with ant nests. The presence of ant nests increases OM and C amount in the soil under Hyparrhenia diplandra tufts than Andropogon schirensis, and Loudetia simplex tufts. In contrast, N amount is higher under L. simplex tufts than A. schirensis; but mean under H. diplandra. The carbon/nitrogen ratios less than 10 indicate high OM mineralization under grass tufts associated with ant nests. This provides the plants with an adequate supply of nutrients.

Molinia caerulea alters forest Quercus petraea seedling growth through reduced mycorrhization.

Oak regeneration is jeopardized by purple moor grass, a well-known competitive perennial grass in the temperate forests of Western Europe. Below-ground interactions regarding resource acquisition and interference have been demonstrated and have led to new questions about the negative impact of purple moor grass on ectomycorrhizal colonization. The objective was to examine the effects of moor grass on root system size and ectomycorrhization rate of oak seedlings as well as consequences on nitrogen (N) content in oak and soil. Oak seedlings and moor grass tufts were planted together or separately in pots under semi-controlled conditions (irrigated and natural light) and harvested 1 year after planting. Biomass, N content in shoot and root in oak and moor grass as well as number of lateral roots and ectomycorrhizal rate in oak were measured. Biomass in both oak shoot and root was reduced when planting with moor grass. Concurrently, oak lateral roots number and ectomycorrhization rate decreased, along with a reduction in N content in mixed-grown oak. An interference mechanism of moor grass is affecting oak seedlings performance through reduction in oak lateral roots number and its ectomycorrhization, observed in conjunction with a lower growth and N content in oak. By altering both oak roots and mycorrhizas, moor grass appears to be a species with a high allelopathic potential. More broadly, these results show the complexity of interspecific interactions that involve various ecological processes involving the soil microbial community and need to be explored in situ.

Ranch Life: The Knuckled Calf

Ranch Life: The Knuckled Calf

Responses of grass productivity traits to bush clearing in semi-arid rangelands in North-West Province of South Africa

Woody plant encroachment threatens herbaceous plant productivity in many rangelands globally. We evaluated the impact of bush clearing on grass tiller, leaf and biomass production, and tuft sizes in the Kgomo-kgomo and Makapaanstad rangelands in North-West Province, South Africa. In each rangeland, the number of tillers and leaves, tuft sizes and biomass of eight dominant grass species were recorded in bush-cleared and uncleared treatments. The treatment and species interacted significantly (P < 0.001) for tiller and leaf production and tuft sizes. Bush clearing increased tiller production of bunch grasses but not stoloniferous grasses. At Kgomo-kgomo, bunch grasses (Panicum maximum (Jacq.) and Urochloa mosambicensis (Hack.) Dandy] had three to six times more tillers and leaves per plant in the cleared than uncleared treatment. At Makapaanstad, only annual bunch grasses [Brachiaria eruciformis (Sibth. & Sm.) Griseb and Tragus berteronianus (Schult.)] attained twice as many tillers and leaves per plant in the cleared compared to uncleared treatment. Biomass was 1776 ± 159 and 696 ± 159 g m−2 in cleared and uncleared treatments respectively at Kgomo-kgomo and 1358 ± 258 and 1089 ± 258 g m−2 at Makapaanstad. The tufts of bunch grasses were nearly twice as large in the cleared compared with the uncleared treatment at Kgomo-kgomo, whereas only stoloniferous grass tufts increased at Makapaanstad. Overall, bush clearing improved grass productivity and performance, but the responses varied by species.

Influence of ant–grass association on soil microbial activity through organic matter decomposition dynamics in Lamto savannah (Côte d’Ivoire)

AbstractAnts are widely regarded as ecosystem engineers because of their effect on soil structure and on the flow of energy. However, little is known about their influence on the carbon flux in tropical humid savannah. Recent investigations in a humid savannah ecosystem in Lamto showed that ant nests’ association with perennial grasses enhances their growth and productivity. This study aimed at understanding the influence of ant nests on soil micro‐organism's activity beneath grass tufts. The kinetic of mineralisation was tested in laboratory conditions at various times (days 1, 2, 4 and 7) beneath three grass species associated and not associated with ant nests, following the CO2 amount released at 30℃ during soil respiration. The amount of CO2 released from the soil is higher beneath grass tufts associated with ant nests compared with those not associated with ant nest. The highest amount of CO2 released from the soil was found beneath Hyparrhenia diplandra tufts followed by Andropogon schirensis tufts and the lowest under Loudetia simplex tufts. This study has shown that ant nests’ association with grass tufts enhances microbial activity in this savannah ecosystem.

Revisiting Theron\u2019s hypothesis on the origin of fairy circles after four decades: Euphorbias are not the cause

BackgroundThe Euphorbia hypothesis on the origin of fairy circles (FCs) in Namibia dates back to 1979. It proposes that the remains of decaying shrubs would induce an allelopathic interaction with the grasses and thereby cause bare-soil FCs. Here, we investigated this hypothesis based on revisiting marked Euphorbias after four decades, comparing the typical size distribution of dead Euphorbia damarana and FCs, and analyzing the spatial patterns of Euphorbias and FCs within the same drone-mapped study plots in three regions of Namibia.ResultsWe found four dead Euphorbias in the southern Giribes that were marked by G.K. Theron about 40 years ago. Those locations did not develop into FCs over this time span. However, for the four dead Euphorbias, we provide photographic evidence that grass tufts were growing at the metal pins of those decaying shrubs, agreeing with previous research findings that the soil taken from beneath dead E. damarana shrubs was stimulating rather than inhibiting the growth of grasses. In the Giribes, there were very large FCs that ranged in diameter from 13.0 to 19.1 m. By contrast, the measured dead E. damarana, including the largest plants that we could find, ranged in size only between 4.2 and 11.7 m. At Brandberg, we found particularly small FCs with diameters between 2.4 and 2.7 m but the dead E. damarana, including the smallest dead shrubs in the area, ranged in size between 4.1 and 7.2 m. Hence given these size mismatches, the decaying Euphorbias cannot induce such observed FCs in the two regions. Spatial patterns of E. damarana and FCs in the two regions Giribes and Brandberg, as well as of E. gummifera and FCs near Garub, showed a strong mismatch within the same habitat: in four out of five plots the patterns differed significantly. FCs were regularly distributed while Euphorbias were predominantly clustered.ConclusionsWe reject the Euphorbia hypothesis based on the fact that grass growth was not prevented under decaying shrubs, the size of dead Euphorbias cannot explain the size of observed FCs and the spatial distribution of Euphorbias cannot cause the specific pattern signature of FCs.

Diversity of soil microscopic filamentous fungi in Dystric Cambisol at the Banská Štiavnica – Šobov (Slovakia) locality after application of remediation measures

This paper evaluates the effect of remediation at the site Banska Stiavnica – Sobov, which has been defined as an environmental burden. Remediation at the site, which is located in the protected landscape area Stiavnicke vrchy in central Slovakia, was undertaken 20 years ago. The area has been officially registered as an environmental burden since 1995. Mining activity induced soil pollution, surface and underground water pollution, destruction of vegetation cover and lower biodiversity at this site. To minimise these threats to the environment, remediation interventions took place from 1995 to 1999. The interventions were aimed at reducing acid mine drainage (AMD) from the heap. Measurements of basic chemical properties at the study area confirmed ongoing acidification, with an effect on soil properties. Acidification of the soil environment is also reflected in the composition of microscopic filamentous fungi, with the main domination of Penicillium species (20) and the random presence of Zygomycota species. The finding of the species Penicillium vulpinum and Trichophaea abundans was of interest. A low similarity of mycocoenoses was confirmed between a plot without vegetation cover or with only very rarely tufts of grass and showing a high level of water erosion (S1) and a plot covered with acidophilic plant species (S2). Similarity was higher between a plot without vegetation cover or with only very rarely tufts of grass and showing a high level of water erosion (S1) and a plot covered by compact meadow vegetation (S3), and the highest similarity was between samples from plots S2 and S3. It was also confirmed that the structure of microfungal communities is directly influenced by soil reaction (pH) and is closely linked to the soil type.

Investigation of when quad bikes rollover in the farming environment

Quad bikes, referred to as All-terrain vehicles (ATVs) in North America, are the leading cause of fatalities and serious injuries on Australian farms and on–farms in many other countries. These fatal and injurious events have been associated with riding over bumps such as rocks, tree stumps, grass tufts, etc., specifically bumps positioned in-line with one wheel track of the quad bike that can result in a rollover trapping the rider. ObjectivesEarlier work presented Finite Element simulations showing how a quad bike and seated rider travelling over the bump on flat terrain can induce sudden steering and yawing that consequently triggers a rollover event. This study identifies which combination of speed, slope and bump size causes a quad bike with a seated rider to rollover. ResultsTwo different rollover mechanisms occur depending on the speed, slope angle and bump height: a rear wheel impact steering induced rollover mechanism; and a front wheel impact tip-over mechanism. When quad bike speed and the slope steepness are increased to typical values (e.g. 20 km/h and 12.5°), the bump size needed to cause a rollover quickly reduces (e.g. around 100 mm). ConclusionQuad bikes are particularly vulnerable to a rollover event when travelling around farming environments where they traverse relatively small bumps on typical grassy slopes at moderate speeds. This suggests that a quad bike should no longer be considered as a vehicle fit for farming tasks and alternate safer vehicles should be considered.

Flip Book

Flip Book Jeffrey Cyphers Wright (bio) Cubist States of Mind / Not the Cruelest Month Marc Jampole The Poet's Haven www.poetshaven.com 36 Pages; Print, $6.00 Reading Marc Jampole's verse reminds me of an old adage I just made up: Words are the matter of poetry—music is the mortar. Jampole combines words and music seamlessly, creating potent tone poems. "A wind full of ocean" becomes the subject of a mellifluous bouquet. "Undivided Stillness" echoes with insights on isolation and integration. Indeed, the questioning of space between the singular and the universal is central throughout as the very atmosphere itself is plumbed for its recesses and riddles. Hence: zen jazzmine wizardry. In his first book, Music from Words (2007), Jampole introduces an innovative brand of linguistic liquidity. We often find bunched rhymes and alliterative bursts. Here is an extreme example. A muggy ocean breeze…fills the streets with sticky nuzzlesand the puzzle of the clouds:will it drizzle, will it drench… Another stylistic flourish involves surprising syntactical juxtapositions like "above us tendriled contrail welkin…." These techniques work together to both support and deflate the existentially elegiac undertow. They also offset the literary danger of overly relying on one or the other. Finding music in the words is evident in the playful poem "July 4th." In this dialogue with a three year old, Joe Venuti becomes the nom du jour. Everything is a "Joe Venuti." And the three year old at the picnicsaid she wanted to play the violinand I said just like Joe Venutiand she said, You're Joe Venutian she pulled a tuft of grass and said,here's some Joe Venuti. Another sort of list poem, "Faith Is a Fine Invention," begins with an epigram by Emily Dickinson. Jampole often speaks through varying masks, from Victor Hugo to Moses to Gilgamesh, exploring legends and archetypes to find beauty and meaning, as here: "formal eternal / mouth moves and makes no sound, then sound of soundlessness." In several poems, a melancholy examination of unfulfilled fates is effectively evoked in a slate-gray palette. For instance, the protagonist of "Thomas Alfred Thinks of His Princesses" is a lonely conformist caught in a shiny grind. The presence of a paralyzed J. Alfred Prufrock (T. S. Eliot) obviously hangs over the poem. "29 Birds (after Audubon)" reads like an ekphrastic erasure work from a guide book (with a sly cross reference to Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"). Jampole has a wonderful ear for placing words in a way that animates them and gives them interactive agency, such as "… screeches floating feathers settling cliffward. / Falcon." By way of conflating these two poems, let me quote the venerable Helen Vendler. "The blackbird has perhaps something in common with Eliot's 'shadow' that falls between potency and act, desire and consummation." Jampole exploits that gap as well—that negative space between positive connectors. In his new double book Not the Cruelest Month/Cubist States of Mind, he has sharpened his skills. The poems in Not the Cruelest Month (with its continued association with Eliot) are, in part, a Romantic overture to April. Nature mingles with the city and its inhabitants in immersive sketches. The wind "gently licks the high rise dwellings." It is "uncorrupted by the fumes / of buses, taxis, cars, and trucks." This diacritical stance, of opposing forces interacting, adds underlying suspense. The dual role of mother nature, its sexuality and its reproductivity, is looked at in "The Legs of Nature:" Between the legs of nature,she's mothering but not a mother,more a fickle courtesanto bend at waistand let her whisper reassuring liesabout forever after possibilities. Continuing to confront dualities, the courtesan in the poem is also an oppositional type compared to the poet. She is not one to "pretend to feel / the dissonance between a life and a language." Yet this carnalized heroine "makes the lie behind the promise of each moment / more attractive than the moment." Finding unity in antithetical propositions is perfectly expressed in the title "Storm Music." Both eight-line stanzas begin with description and end with a...

Context-dependent lateralization of trunk movements in wild Asian elephants

Asymmetrical trunk use in elephants represents a distinctive example of motor lateralization. Previous studies have shown that trunk movements in the elephant behaviour associated with feeding is lateralized at the individual, but not the population level. The manifestation of lateralized behaviour depends on the nature of the behaviour and is usually more pronounced in social context. Therefore, we hypothesized that population-level lateralization of trunk use in elephants is manifested in social behaviour. One-sided biases in trunk movements were assessed in wild individually-identified Asian elephants during feeding (tearing off a tuft of grass) and social interactions (trunk-to-mouth contacts and trunk-to-genitals contacts between male initiator and female recipient). In feeding, lateralization at the individual and population levels was estimated based on 50 lateral trunk uses per individual. In social interactions, only the population-level bias was assessed using a single trunk contact from each individual. For trunk movements during feeding, elephants showed robust individual preferences, but no population-level lateralization. The distribution of right- and left-trunkers in the present study did not differ significantly from that obtained in previous studies of both the same elephant population and geographically distinct population. No population-level bias in trunk movements during trunk-to-mouth contacts was revealed. In trunk-to-genitals contacts, in contrast, a population-level lateralization was found. Right-sided trunk movements prevailed in males touching females. While individual preferences for feeding, combined with the absence of one-sided population bias, is obviously a species-typical characteristic of Asian elephants, social behaviour, such as male-female socio-sexual contacts, can elicit population-level lateralization of trunk use in this species. The right-sided bias in trunk-to-genitals contacts may reflect lateralization of olfactory perception. If this is the case, the revealed lateralization indicates a right-hemispheric advantage in the processing of social information which is consistent with the general tendency in mammals.

Efficient modeling of entangled details for natural scenes

AbstractDigital landscape realism often comes from the multitude of details that are hard to model such as fallen leaves, rock piles or entangled fallen branches. In this article, we present a method for augmenting natural scenes with a huge amount of details such as grass tufts, stones, leaves or twigs. Our approach takes advantage of the observation that those details can be approximated by replications of a few similar objects and therefore relies on mass‐instancing. We propose an original structure, the Ghost Tile, that stores a huge number of overlapping candidate objects in a tile, along with a pre‐computed collision graph. Details are created by traversing the scene with the Ghost Tile and generating instances according to user‐defined density fields that allow to sculpt layers and piles of entangled objects while providing control over their density and distribution.

Full Moon Night, and Entering the Hills

Full Moon Night, and Entering the Hills Ya Shi (bio) Translated by Nick Admussen (bio) Full Moon Night Currently I cannot say that I understand the valley understand the petal-like, windborne unfolding of her confession full moon night in the underbrush, ladybugs flutter like the grains of stars falling into the valley’s wet creases someone says: the full moon can trigger a kind of savage snow . . . I believe that this is a simple truth: tonight when the biting cold of silence crushes my stone house. And shadows of branches steal in through the window the oak desk that’s so fragile I am forced to love it has exploded just a little bit (from the glossy maroon crook of the elbow off to coarse distance) once I dried it out under the overfilled moon hoping it could become pregnant with deep, whirl-rippled blood just like my flesh, awakened by the vast sky wandering an empty valley listening to the mountain’s secret, copious spill [End Page 18] Entering the Hills If you quail before your masterdo not be afraid to seek wisdom in nature! —Hölderlin Please believe that the rays of light at nightfall have damp antennae. Carrying ancient books in both arms like a prize I walked out of the shade of uninterrupted numbers past the distant indifferent voices of the Mass. A tuft of wild grass turned gold in the gradually deepening dusk, durable twinkling with potential that’s hard to quantify. And the light wind caressing the cheek brings the gem clatter of spring water, a shrinking scent of flowers vast amounts of dust from the vault of heaven. It is so good to stay in this empty valley! A curlew alights on a ball-round stone before me silent, secret heat wound around its breast like a thick, curved compass needle. I stop to watch branches stretch freely among the dusky corners of the earth— flame in such detail draws the old, fogged mirror of early night. [End Page 19] Ya Shi Ya Shi is the author of four collections of poetry and one of prose, including a special issue of the magazine Blade devoted to his work. He is a winner of the Liu Li’an prize and has served as the editor of several influential unofficial poetry journals. A graduate of Beijing University, he is currently a professor of mathematics and lives outside the city of Chengdu. Nick Admussen Nick Admussen is an assistant professor of Chinese literature at Cornell University. He has translated the work of Zang Di and samizdat poet Genzi, as well as the poetry and prose of Liu Xiaobo. His own poetry has recently appeared in Fence and Sou’wester. He blogs on Chinese poetry in American life for the Boston Review. Copyright © 2015 Middlebury College Publications

Factors Affecting Nest Success of the Oriental Skylark on the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract The Oriental Skylark Alauda gulgula is a widespread species, but its natural history is poorly understood, especially at high altitudes. In this study, we collected breeding information on Oriental Skylarks at an altitude of 3,400 m on the northeastern part of the Tibetan Plateau and examined the effects of nest-site characteristics on nest success. The birds arrived in the study area in April, built nests in tufts of tall grass on the ground and laid their eggs (gray with brown speckles) between May and July. Clutch size averaged 3.3 eggs. Incubation was mainly by the female and lasted 12.4 days. The young left the nest when 9.7 days old. During the breeding season, individual skylarks made 2–3 breeding attempts. Nesting success, as measured by the proportion of nests from which at least one young fledged, was 41.3%. Predation accounted for the majority of failed nests. Some predators (e.g. carnivores) took both skylarks and Mountain Pikas Ochotona curzoniae, although the pikas, as the dominant ...

Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples, and the Projects of a New American Nation-State

Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples, and the Projects of a New American Nation-State Steven Hahn (bio) At the very time he was drafting the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, President Abraham Lincoln dispatched one of his generals, John Pope, to Minnesota with orders to suppress a rebellion of the eastern, or Santee, division of the Sioux. The rebellion built on at least two decades of festering tensions that had turned relatively amicable exchange relations with British, French, and American traders—some of whom had intermarried and been incorporated into villages—into hardbitten political conflicts with various federal officials and white settlers (mostly German, Scandinavian, and Irish immigrants) who hungrily eyed the fertile and game-rich terrain of southern Minnesota. In the process, the Sioux (who in this case composed four bands and called themselves Dakotas) had ceded millions of acres, which included ancestral grounds, for a strip of reservation land along the Minnesota River, annuity payments, and supplies. Recalcitrance in the U.S. Congress along with corruption among Indian agents and traders then combined to stretch a series of treaties to the breaking point; by the 1850s, the Dakotas were under great stress and increasingly divided over how best to respond, as some of their bands faced starvation.1 But the federal government’s determination to wage war against the Confederacy caught the attention of many Dakotas and encouraged them to take the measure of the consequences. Although Confederates made no efforts to win them as allies in their rebellion as they had done in Indian Territory and the southern Plains, Confederate sympathizers in their orbit eagerly told of Union defeats in 1861 and the first half of 1862. Then, as federal troops moved in and out of nearby Forts Ridgely, Abercrombie, and Ripley, some Dakota leaders imagined “that the South was getting the best of the fight, and … the North would be whipped.” When, in August 1862, a Union officer came recruiting young men of mixed ancestry (“half-breeds” or “mixed-bloods,” as they were called) for military service, one [End Page 307] of the chiefs, Big Eagle (Wamditanka), concluded that “the whites must be pretty hard up for men to fight the South.” “It began to be whispered about,” he recalled, “that now would be a good time to go to war with the whites and get the lands back.” The Dakota sack of a federal warehouse in search of desperately needed food exacerbated tensions. “When men are hungry they help themselves,” influential Dakota leader Little Crow (Taoyateduta) explained. “So far as I am concerned,” Indian agent Andrew Myrick scoffed, “if they are hungry let them eat grass.” An unrelated incident that left five white settlers dead and retaliation a certainty finally triggered the decision to rise, and on August 18, Little Crow led a column of warriors toward an agency outpost. There, shouting “Kill all the whites!” they overran the place. One of the first of the victims was Myrick, shot as he ran for the woods and offered the retributive justice he had so amply earned: the attacking Dakotas stuffed a tuft of grass in his now-silenced mouth.2 Other Sioux war parties spread across the Minnesota countryside enacting lethal vengeance. White settlers were murdered, their farms pillaged and burned, and federal forts were threatened. By the end of August, the rebellion had spread west into the Dakota Territory, and alarms were raised further south into Iowa and Nebraska. Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsay began by mobilizing available troops left in the state and then wired Lincoln and his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, for help in the form of men, arms, and horses. “This is not our war,” he screeched. “It is a national war.” Ramsay was soon joined by his counterparts in Wisconsin, Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska who feared that the entire Sioux people, together with the Chippewa and Winnebago, might soon support the rising. “A few thousand” settlers were “at the mercy of 50,000 Indians should they see proper to fall upon us,” the Dakota governor exclaimed, adding his voice to demands that “something must be done at once.” The last thing the Lincoln administration needed in the late summer of...

The Way Out

By the time Iris started her traverse of the hillside it was 3:30 in the afternoon and snowing hard. She had her rifle slung across her body and was carrying an elk front quarter and the two tenderloins—more than she wanted to—and her pack was lopsided to the left. There was nothing she could do about that now. Warren was a hundred yards ahead, a shape shrouded in white against a whiter background. It had taken them four hours to gut, skin, and quarter the elk, and blood had frozen in her gloves. She’d wrapped her hands in spare socks and kept one and then another tucked under an armpit, keeping one hand free for balance. She still smelled elk musk in her parka and in her camouflage pants. They were on an animal trail in a meadow high in the valley, steep up and steep down, and the tufts of grass were slippery with snow. Snow swirled through the leafless aspens ahead, across the meadow, and into the Engelmann spruce across the canyon. Below her, maybe three hundred yards, was the main trail, where a creek ran through a flat of red willows. She couldn’t hear the water, but she imagined its soft rush over the stones, and imagining kept her moving. Warren switchbacked lower, his head tucked down sideways into the snow, which covered his wool hat and his beard and stuck to his shoulders. She must have looked the same, as if she cared, except she was wearing a Rockies cap. Her feet were cold, her hands were cold, but she was sweating under her parka, and sweat ran down her spine into her underpants. She made the switchback, too, paying attention to where she put her feet, but was farther from Warren than before. Warren’s idea was to pass by the camp at the creek and go straight to the truck, get out a significant amount of meat—he had a hindquarter and the backstraps in his pack—and sleep in their bed. Otherwise, they’d have to hang the meat in camp, finish boning and cutting the elk, and still they’d have to make multiple trips out and back. To War-

Yellowstone Wolf Project

Yellowstone Wolf Project Travis Mossotti (bio) Yellowstone Wolf Project It tingles in the spine of all who hear wolves by night, or who scan their tracks by day. —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac I. Big Sexy From Bozeman to Gardiner, the highways were slicked black by a late winter storm, and I noticed how thin Regina had grown from long hours, eating little, the new hole she’d carved into her belt using the tip of a hunting knife, then the one-street town, then the northern entrance to Yellowstone, its high arch, bull and cow elk suffering scabies, orange lichen painting a cluster of boulders from a two-year-old rockslide. I told her about the life-sized bronze statue of a grizzly in Bozeman’s airport lobby, reared up [End Page 115] and snarling like a movie bear—scripted, unnatural. Up ahead, a group of wolf watchers, wolf paparazzi, had gathered at a turnout, and she pulled over so I could look through high-powered zoom and see the first free wolf of my life, watched him nap on a hillside in Wyoming, belly full from a recent kill, nicknamed: Big Sexy. II. At the Kill Site We spent the morning dodging huge domelike patties of bison dung roasting golden brown along the path, hiked across rollers of scrubland sage and crumbled escarpments, followed a single set of wolf tracks for hours. Once, in a low valley next to a river bend, she pointed out a yellow flower wet with snowmelt, and suddenly they were everywhere they hadn’t been before. I remember the first that we saw of the cow elk carcass was a rumen pile, stomach ripped out and dragged clean from the body—they do this to keep the acid in the stomach from bursting and ruining the meal—then a spine, curved and wet, still clinging helplessly to the skull, and finally three of the four legs scattered about. She set to work to collect what data remained, sawed through femur and thick white marrow (healthy), plucked teeth from her mandible to identify age (a mere four years), [End Page 116] put the saw into her backpack before settling down on a bluff to eat lunch. We ate peanut butter and jelly on wheat above a river so blue it was green, so clear that the smoothed boulders stared back at us like hats behind a hat shop window. III. The Herd While crossing the narrow bridge, we slowed the truck for a moment to watch a family of river otters on the jagged ice shelves below—the river’s white teeth, teeth of melt and flood—when a herd of bison came stampeding from behind, an angry herd of stampeding hooves and heft that made it a few feet from the bumper before we sped away, lucky or blessed, the herd getting smaller in the rearview, our heartbeats normalizing. I thought it must have been the fear of being alone that set them charging across that bridge, that startled them in one direction versus the other, although I couldn’t have been certain. In any case we spent a few quiet minutes inside that coarse, sage-covered Lamar Valley which rose on both sides into peculiar mountain peaks, listened as snowmelt became the current of a mindful river that knew how to take its time. IV. Grass When later we found an elk that had died over the winter of natural causes—a rare luxury— had frozen, thawed, and been eaten, [End Page 117] tufts of tall grass were already laying claim to it, as though the earth had hands and was holding it still, pulling it down into the softened hillside. All that remained was a chunked pile of bones after the Silver wolves stumbled on its smell, a boon, stripped its body clean, went to sleep it off on Junction Butte. It’s no wonder elk live such startled, stressful lives, persisting across the white valleys of winter like furred stoics, blanketed by the fear that come spring they’ll bleat and shit while being eaten alive. And to imagine that this cow lasted eighteen winters: arthritic, necrotic; it goes...

Short-term response of the encroacher shrub Seriphium plumosum to fire

Quantification of the short-term impact of burning in terms of the encroacher shrub Seriphium plumosum and grass tuft mortality, seed germination of the shrub (field and seed bank), aboveground phytomass production, plant density and basal cover of the grass sward was conducted in semiarid grassland following an accidental fire. These variables were determined along a terrain morphological unit where S. plumosum density increased with altitude. On average 57% of S. plumosum seedlings were killed by fire, but fire had no significant (P > 0.05) influence on the mortality of mature shrubs. Fire significantly (P ≤ 0.01) stimulated seedling emergence of S. plumosum, to such an extent that an average of 510 seedlings ha−1 occurred on the foot slope, while only 9.14 seedlings ha−1 emerged in the unburnt treatment. Seedling emergence showed greater association with protection from direct sunlight and seedlings emerged not closer than 281 mm from the nearest leaves (canopy) of a mature S. plumosum shrub. The aboveground phytomass production of the unburnt grass sward was nearly double that of the burnt areas over the first season following the fire. Fire as a control measure should be carefully handled because it can lead to increased encroachment of S. plumosum.

King of Fire Island

King of Fire Island Mark Doty (bio) Hard by our fence in tea dance light,he seemed the very model of his kind: a buck in velvet at the garden rim,bronze lightly shagged, split thumbs of antlers budding. That odd way deer holdextra still, as though there were degrees of stasis. We were objects of his regal,mild regard. Did I really say tea? Measure the afternoon by a bar event?Here it's a fixed point, gnomon of the day; our island's scattered men gather,near seven, and stand with cocktails in the thick of buzzing bodies, intentin quick talk, though their subtle eyes won't miss a trick. Here, after all,tea dance started—wise strategy for an island with no streetlamps,boardwalks pitching along the dunes: scary, after drinks, far better navigatedbefore nightfall. He stepped toward us, [End Page 60] an unexpected lurch, and thenwe saw: one front leg merely tapered to a whisper, like the torsoof a cartoon ghost. No hoof. He gladly accepted a carrot,a gesture plainly familiar. Where else could he have lived?No cars, no hunting, visitors who'd bring him kitchen scraps,nothing to trouble but cameras buzzing their automatic flash,or dance music booming from some big box rental.And ticks; he wore a small crown of swollen passengersbetween his two brave ears, where he could not bite them,and no other deer provided the seemingly secret groomingthey perform. He exhaled a small puff of carrot-scented wind,handsome face expressive, not much in doubt of the human.We'd see him, evenings, up the walk, browsing the cranberry bog;he hauled himself through gardens, intently working tufts of grass,muscled shoulder pulling him ahead. A hoof's a deft accomplishment,that hard-sheened shoe of blue-black carbon, [End Page 61] but he'd learned to do with what he had.I brought him celery. He liked corn silk but not the husks,and seemed to prefer the leaves of sassafras, with their faint spice scent;something—did I imagine it?— seemed to pass across his gazeas he took them in, lower jaw working horizontally, a faint tearing sound.Then he'd take his tongue to my hands. They startled me at first, those sucking lipsaround my fingertips, careful, as if he were grooming anotherof his kind. I felt I could lay my hand on that long slope of forehead,or stroke behind the ears, though whatever was leftof his wildness needed to stand. I tried to name him; he wanted no wordfrom me. More likely I should be subject to this monarch of holly,hobbling prince of shadblow grove, our island's crippled king.When July mounted to its zenith his antlers turned in oddly,each mirroring the other —wouldn't they collide?What grows in toward itself, how can it find company amongits kind? I went looking, spent daylilies [End Page 62] in hand, but if a white tail flashed,it wasn't his. Paul said, You can't will him to show up. Out there somewherein the leaf-realms of August, lurching alone through all that glory!In the distance the party thundered, season climbing to its apogee, big speakers dragged out to the shorewhere midnight lapped the snow fence and dreamers swayed and danced,held one another or themselves, and though the artificial mist triedto complicate the twittering skyfield of laser lights,a real fog put the false to shame. In November, Paul saw himgrazing a thicket by the yellowing bog. Not again. Then, late winter,a hushed, not quite scrutable rumor on the ferry: a deer's headfloating in the bay, wreathed with flowers, evidence of—ritual murder, santeria?— never to be mentioned again.Bad for business, knowledge no summer renter required.My friend? Have I any right to call him that? He could hardly flee.But listen: I saw my own severed head [End Page 63] slip to the floor, a glazed, paltry thing,open eye looking up toward—my subjectivity?— as if through a bloody gel. So muchfor the notion you...