Date of Award
2026
Degree Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Botany, MS
Program
Botany
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
J. Travis Columbus
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Naomi Fraga
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Mare Nazaire
Terms of Use & License Information
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Rights Information
© 2026 Matthew Yamamoto
Keywords
alpine, bryophyte, calcareous rock, floristics, Sierra Nevada
Subject Categories
Botany
Abstract
The McGee Creek watershed is a topographically and geologically diverse drainage in the eastern Sierra Nevada of California covering 27.28 sq-mi (70.65 sq-km), with an elevation range of 6750–12,999 ft (2057–3962 m). Relative to nearby watersheds, few plant specimens had been collected in the McGee Creek watershed before 2024, and these were mostly collected along roads and trails. To better understand the flora, 2860 collections of vascular and non-vascular plants were made across the watershed in 2024 and 2025, and 187 specimens collected before 2024 were examined. In total, the flora of the McGee Creek watershed includes at least 970 species (774 vascular, 196 non-vascular) and 1011 minimum-rank taxa (813 vascular, 198 nonvascular). Eighty-three percent of these species (84% of the minimum-rank taxa), including 93% of the rare or threatened species and 93% of the introduced species, were not documented within the watershed before 2024. Notable additions to the flora include 30 taxa newly reported for Mono County, three species newly reported for the Sierra Nevada, and one species newly reported for California. Only 51% of the minimum-rank taxa known to grow in the watershed were observed within 3 m of a road or trail, demonstrating that off-trail surveys are necessary to adequately capture plant diversity in a heterogeneous landscape like this. An overview of factors that may affect the flora, a description of vegetation types, a description of plant distributions in the watershed, a comparison of the flora with other parts of the western United States, and a voucher-based and annotated checklist of the flora are provided.
ISBN
9798247931812
Recommended Citation
Yamamoto, Matthew. (2026). A Vascular and Non-Vascular Flora of the McGee Creek Watershed, Mono County, California. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 1132. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1132.
