Aug 25, 2006
Abstract
As a part of the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research project, we determined how land-use alteration influenced spider and harvestman diversity. We sampled spiders in six habitat types (desert parks, urban desert remnants, industrial, agricultural, xeric- and mesic-residential yards) and tested how habitat type and productivity affected spider diversity and abundance. As expected, agricultural fields and mesic yards were more productive than the other, xeric habitats. These more ...
Aug 25, 2006
Abstract
The effect of rural variability in calculating the urban heat island effect for Phoenix, Arizona, was examined. A dense network of temperature and humidity sensors was deployed across different land uses on an agricultural farm southeast of Phoenix for a 10-day period in April 2002. Temperature data from these sensors were compared with data from Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix (an urban station) to assess the urban heat ...
Aug 25, 2006
Abstract
A refined land cover classification for the arid Phoenix (Arizona, USA) metropolitan area and some simple modifications to the surface energetics were introduced in the fifth-generation PSU/NCAR mesoscale meteorological model MM5. The single urban category in the existing 24-category United States Geological Survey (USGS) land cover classification used in MM5 was divided into three classes to account for heterogeneity of urban land cover. Updated land cover data were ...
