Managers of protected areas are under increasing pressure to measure their effectiveness in conserving native biological diversity in ways that are scientifically sound, practical, and comparable among protected areas over time. The Nature Conservancy and its partners have developed a "Measures of Success" framework with four core components: (1) identifying a limited number of focal conservation targets, (2) identifying key ecological attributes for these targets, (3) identifying an acceptable range of variation for each attribute as measured by properly selected indicators, and (4) rating target status based on whether or not the target's key attributes are within their acceptable ranges of variation. A target cannot be considered "conserved" if any of its key ecological attributes exceeds its acceptable range of variation. The framework provides a rigorous basis not only for measuring success but for setting conservation objectives, assessing threats to biodiversity, identifying monitoring and research needs, and communicating management information to nonspecialists.

Fertilization of the soil in herbaceous plant communities has been observed to lead to an increase in productivity but a decline in species richness and diversity. We tested the hypothesis that the decline in diversity is due to increased competition from a dominant species by removing the dominant species, Dactylis glomerata L., from an old field community with and without fertilization. Fertilization without the removal of Dactylis resulted in a steep decline in species numbers and in species diversity. The removal of Dactylis when fertilizer was added prevented the decline in species richness. Removal of this dominant species led to an increase in species diversity, an increase in either the frequency or the abundance of almost half of the common species in the system, and an increase in the combined biomass of uncommon species. The response to the removal of Dactylis was greater at higher than at low soil fertility for most but not all variables. Key words: old-field, fertilization, competition, species diversity, community structure, Dactylis glomerata.

address the need for a long-term research program to meet critical challenges in wind erosion research 8 and management in the United States. The Network has three aims: (1) provide data to support 9 understanding of basic aeolian processes across land use types, land cover types, and management practices, (2) support development and application of models to assess wind erosion and dust emission and their impacts on human and environmental systems, and (3) encourage collaboration among the aeolian research community and resource managers for the transfer of wind erosion technologies. The Network currently consists of thirteen intensively instrumented sites providing measurements of aeolian sediment transport rates, meteorological conditions, and soil and vegetation properties that influence wind erosion. Network sites are located across rangelands, croplands, and deserts of the western US. In support of Network activities, http://winderosionnetwork.org was developed as a portal for information about the Network, providing site descriptions, measurement protocols, and data visualization tools to facilitate collaboration with scientists and managers interested in the Network and accessing Network products.The Network provides a mechanism for engaging national and international partners in a wind erosion research program that addresses the need for improved understanding and prediction of aeolian processes across complex and diverse land use types and management practices.

In a riparian population of Erythronium americanum (Liliaceae) in central New Jersey, experimentally self-pollinated plant produced markedly fewer fruit and fewer seeds per fruit than hand-outcrossed and open pollinated plants, even though differences were not evident between pollen tubes that penetrated stigmas from self or foreign pollen. This weak self-compatibility and a positive relation between the percentage of seeds set by outcrossed plants and the distance between pollen donor and recipient plants indicate that this population could be susceptible to inbreeding depression.Limited resources for seed development apparently constrained maximal seed production, based on low seed set (40.6%) by hand-pollinated plants and positive correlations for these plants between plant size and the number and size of seeds set. In contrast, naturally-pollinated plants set a smaller proportion of their ovules, suggesting that limited pollinator service reduced the quantity of seeds produced in this population. Free-foraging bees usually removed more than half of the available pollen in a single visit, so that individual plants probably have few opportunities to disseminate their pollen.Even though sexually reproductive ramets produce only a single flower per year, less than a third of variation in floral morphology is associated with variation in plant size. Within the flower, the sizes of some closely associated structures, such as the style and ovary, and the anthers and filaments, vary essentially independently of one another. Production of nectar and pollen, the ultimate attractors of pollinating insects, was positively correlated with flower size.