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Rock Climbing or Lichen Climbing? How Rock Climbing Impacts Bryophyte and Lichen Communities Within the Red River Gorge

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2019, Master of Science, Ohio State University, Environment and Natural Resources.
Outdoor recreation has consistently been one of America’s greatest pastimes. Recently, the development of rock climbing areas has increased, becoming a $3.8 million industry in the Red River Gorge, Kentucky. This development has been shown to have differing levels of effects on the biota on cliff faces, with difficulty isolating natural effects to anthropogenic ones. The goals of this study are: 1) to determine the best practices of different abundance acquisition methods, determine if they can sense a disturbance gradient, and compare them to in-situ visual estimation, and 2) determine how rock climbing impacts cryptogamic abundance, species richness, and community composition while controlling for environmental factors. Accurately estimating vegetative abundance is a cornerstone of many ecological studies and a variety of methods to collect such data have been developed. In certain situations, for instance determining cryptogam abundance on rock surfaces, study sites can be difficult to access. Determining the best method to use when estimating abundance is an important part of collecting accurate data, gaining data in an efficient way, and limiting exposure to hazardous terrain. Because of this, it is important to understand the different types of methods available and how they compare to one another. Due to the increase in the popularity of rock climbing, understanding the impact of rock climbing is increasingly important, which requires abundance, species richness, and community composition data of cryptogamic communities on rock surfaces. Abundance was estimated using four different approaches: 1) visual cover estimation (total life-form and species-specific cover); 2) visual estimation of total cover from quadrat photographs; 3) unsupervised classification of quadrat photographs using the Interface Definition Language program Environment for Visualizing Images (ENVI); and 4) chlorophyll florescence using a Hansatech pocket PEA. The climbing use intensity, heat load index, and microtopographic variation were estimated for each quadrat. When comparing cover estimation methods, the ENVI method was the most strongly predictive of field visual estimation (R2 = 0.67), closely followed by visual photographic methods (R2 = 0.60). Chlorophyll florescence was not predictive of field visual methods (R2 = 0.09) but provided important insight to the presence of photosynthetic material not visible to the human eye. In-situ visual abundance, photographic visual abundance, and ENVI methods all detected significant differences in abundance across the climbing disturbance gradient. Community composition was significantly impacted (P < 0.01) by rock-climbing, the vertical resource gradient, climbing use intensity, microtopographic variation and heat load. Climbing impact interacted with the vertical resource gradient and the largest impacts on cryptogam abundance were seen at higher elevations on the routes. To minimize the impact of rock climbing, route establishers should avoid bolting to the top of the cliff face, climbers should avoid “topping out”, and climbers should climb as close the line of bolts (or guidebook depicted center of route) as possible.
G. Matthew Davies (Advisor)
Robert Klips (Committee Member)
Kaiguang Zhao (Committee Member)
Stephen Matthews (Committee Member)
111 p.

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Reding, J. M. (2019). Rock Climbing or Lichen Climbing? How Rock Climbing Impacts Bryophyte and Lichen Communities Within the Red River Gorge [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1562584961670604

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Reding, Jordan. Rock Climbing or Lichen Climbing? How Rock Climbing Impacts Bryophyte and Lichen Communities Within the Red River Gorge. 2019. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1562584961670604.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Reding, Jordan. "Rock Climbing or Lichen Climbing? How Rock Climbing Impacts Bryophyte and Lichen Communities Within the Red River Gorge." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1562584961670604

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)