In 2011, monitoring was conducted to follow up on a 2005 survey of dune vegetation habitat and for continued development of a long-term vegetation monitoring protocol for this ecosystem. In 2005, thirty vegetation sampling sites were established in what was then dune grassland habitat throughout Cape Cod National Seashore (CACO), arranged along seven transects running perpendicular to the coastline from Chatham to Provincetown. Each site consisted of two 10x10-m plots. In addition to distance from coastline, sites were characterized by integrating GIS technology to assess landscape changes and succession.

Background and History Although Cape Cod National Seashore (CACO) is perhaps best known for its shoreline scenery, the interior forests and woodlands have become the most prominent feature of this coastal landscape. In the period before European settlement, Cape Cod was covered largely by pine-oak forests, interspersed with smaller areas of hickory (Carya spp.), beech (Fagus grandifolia), red maple (Acer rubrum), and birch (Betula spp.) (Motzkin et al. 2002). In the 18th and 19th centuries, much of Cape Cod consisted of open heathlands and grasslands created and maintained primarily by the agricultural practices of early settlers that included cutting, grazing, and burning (Eberhardt 2001, Eberhardt et al. 2003). The cessation of these activities by the mid-1800's allowed trees to re-invade the landscape (Patterson et al. 1983, Motzkin et al. 2002, Parshall et al. 2003), and forests now occupy the largest land-surface area and biovolume of any vegetation community (Figure 1).

Spontaneous resting-state fluctuations in neuronal activity offer insights into the inherent organization of the human brain, and may provide markers for diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used to investigate intrinsic functional connectivity networks, which are identified based on similarities in the signal measured from different brain regions. From data acquisition to interpretation of results, Introduction to Resting State fMRI Functional Connectivity discusses a wide range of approaches without requiring any previous knowledge of resting state fMRI, making it highly accessible to readers from a broad range of backgrounds. Supplemented with online datasets and examples to enable the reader to obtain hands-on experience working with real data, this primer provides a practical and approachable introduction for those new to the field of resting state fMRI. The Oxford Neuroimaging Primers are short texts aimed at new researchers or advanced undergraduates from the biological, medical or physical sciences. They are intended to provide a thorough understanding of the ways in which neuroimaging data can be analyzed and how that relates to acquisition and interpretation. Each primer has been written so that it is a stand-alone introduction to a particular area of neuroimaging, and the primers also work together to provide a comprehensive foundation for this increasingly influential field.