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Improved sampling designs are needed to detect, monitor, and predict plant migrations and plant diversity changes caused by climate change and other human activities. This chapter provides a methodology based on multi-scale vegetation plots established across forest ecotones to monitor changing patterns of plant diversity, invasion of non-native plant species, and plant migrations at landscape scales. The methods are applied in the forests of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

This chapter lingers in the Louis Armstrong International Airport outside of New Orleans, and discovers possibilities for regional identification as well as postmodern paradoxes of non-place and hyper-reality. The essay considers the New Orleans airport not just as a generic point of transit, but as a uniquely situated interstitial zone, a proxy for the city that also trembles at the edge of oblivion, as it is scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a new terminal. Looking at what gives the space its “airportness,” as well as what tethers the terminal to farther flung objects and destinations, to travel tourism, this chapter ponders the idiosyncrasies and ecotones of Louis Armstrong International.

The idea that there are many subterranean habitats close to the surface that are little known and do not fit comfortably into any habitat classification scheme is introduced. Four of these shallow subterranean habitats (SSHs) are unique (strict sense shallow subterranean habitats)—hypotelminorheic and seepage springs, milieu souterrain superficiel (including talus and scree), epikarst, and calcrete aquifers—and have intermediate sized habitat spaces, no light, and close connections to the surface. Broad sense shallow subterranean habitats include habitats with large (lava tubes) or small (aquatic interstitial and soil) spaces. SSHs are generally broadly but patchily distributed across the landscape although some have restricted physical requirements, such as the presence of a shallow clay layer for hypotelminorheic habitats. Close surface connections have impacts on environmental conditions, nutrient fluxes, and movement of animals through SSHs. While SSHs can be ecotones, they are habitats in their own right, and not necessarily connected with deeper subterranean habitats. They are of general biological interest because of the presence of eyeless, depigmented species, their possible role as stepping stones to adaptation to deeper subterranean environments, their geographic pattern, and conservation issues raised by them. Brief examples of each type of SSH are discussed.