There is a great need for simple yet flexible and biologically meaningful ways of classifying landscapes using readily available data for the purposes of inventorying and monitoring biodiversity. In this paper we describe a strategy developed for the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park (NC and TN, USA) that establishes an objective and iterative approac...

Field symptoms typical of ozone injury have been observed on several conifer species in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and tropospheric ozone levels in the Park can be high, suggesting that ozone may be causing growth impairment of these plants. The objective of this research was to test the ozone sensitivity of selected conifer species under controlled exposure conditions. Seedlings of t...

Three new bitunicate ascomycetes belonging to the genus Acanthostigma are described from terrestrial decomposing wood collected from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA. Phylogenetic analyses of the nuclear ribosomal 28S large subunit and internal transcribed spacer region placed all three species in the Tubeufiaceae and confirmed morphological analyses that these are distinct species. Exp...

The species composition of mesostigmatid mites in the soil and leaf litter was studied on the Szczeliniec Wielki plateau, which is spatially isolated from similar rocky habitats. A total of 1080 soil samples were taken from June 2004 to September 2005. The samples, including the organic horizon from the herb layer and litter from rock cracks, were collected using steel cylinders (area 40 cm2, d...