Status of the Small-flowered Sand Verbena (Tripterocalyx micranthus) in Alberta /
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Within Canada, small-flowered sand verbena (Tripterocalyx micranthus (Torr.)Hook.) is primarily distributed in southeastern Alberta (eight general locations containing a total of 15 sites).As well, the species occurs at one site just east of the Alberta border in southern Saskatchewan.Otherwise, smallflowered sand verbena is confined in the wild to the western United States.Small-flowered sand verbena is considered "May Be At Risk" in Alberta, according to the General Status 2000 exercise conducted by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, unpubl.report), and it is ranked S2 by the Alberta Natural Heritage Information Centre.In 1 992, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) designated the species as "Threatened."This designation was reviewed and upgraded to "Endangered" in 2002.This report summarizes the existing information on small-flowered sand verbena in Alberta to assist with the assessment of its status.In Alberta, small-flowered sand verbena is known from eight general locations: Lost River, Purple Springs, Grassy Lake, Wolf Island, Lower Bow, North of Medicine Hat, North of Medicine Hat Sufifield and SufField National Wildlife Area.Some general locations contain multiple sites and subsites.In 2002, new small-flowered sand verbena sites were located at Purple Springs (Site 5, 269 plants).Grassy Lake (Site 6, 1797 plants).Lower Bow (Site 11, 789 plants).North of Medicine Hat (Site 12, 99 plants) and North of Medicine Hat Suffield (Site 14, 1 plant).The total population of the four sites surveyed during the 2002 field season was 2955 plants.In past years, small-flowered sand verbena has been located at Lost River (Sites 1-3, 200 plants estimated).Purple Springs (Site 4, 30 plants).Wolf Island (Site 7, 1 10 plants).Lower Bow (Sites 8-10, 265 plants).North of Medicine Hat (Site 13, fewer than 100 plants) and Suffield National Wildlife Area (Site 15,1 plant).The number of plants at any particular site may vary substantially from year to year.The total population estimated in 2002 for all Alberta sites is 3600 plants, which likely represents a maximum along a wide continuum of population sizes for sand verbena in Alberta.Small-flowered sand verbena sites are typically small in size, not exceeding 1 00 m^.Population numbers can change dramatically from year to year based on climatic conditions, in particular, moisture levels.In 200 1 the Lower Bow site contained 1 plant, while in 2002 the same site contained 789 plants.Smallflowered sand verbena is an ephemeral annual species, which, in good years, produces masses of seeds that remain viable in the sandy seed bank until a future growing season with suitable climatic conditions.Small-flowered sand verbena is found in dry habitats, particularly in loose sands of dune and sandhill areas.Some element of active sand is usually required.The largest populations are on hard-packed finer sand on level terrain, but it also occurs on south-, west-, and east-facing slopes and along dune ridge tops.Most sites are on the uplands, but the species may also occur in the valleys of the Lost and South Saskatchewan rivers where sand dunes extend down into the valleys.It is restricted to the Dry Mixedgrass Subregion of the Grassland Natural Region, an area that has undergone extensive modification from its natural state by human activity.Limiting factors of concern include dune stabilization, changes in land use and invasion of weedy species.The Grassy Lake site, containing more than half of the plant's Alberta population, is currently under threat as a result of sand removal and levelling of the main dune area.Considerable work on management strategies and status assessment should be undertaken as soon as possible as a means of maintaining the presence of this species in Alberta.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".