Restoration
Access webinar recording.
Description: Ecological restoration efforts are being implemented in the context of a rapidly changing climate, which poses a new set of challenges and uncertainty. Climate-smart restoration is the process of enhancing ecological function of degraded, damaged, or destroyed areas in a manner that makes them resilient to the consequences of climate change. The presentation will provide an overview of Point Blue’s climate-smart restoration framework and demonstrate how it can be used to inform planning and design for various restoration projects, drawing on examples from various riparian and wetland systems in California.
Speaker: Marian Vernon is the Sierra Meadow Adaptation Leader at Point Blue Conservation Science, where she works with partners to catalyze climate-smart meadow restoration and land conservation in the Sierra Nevada.
View paper.
This study provide several recent examples related to landscape monitoring, restoration, reclamation, and conservation in which landscape science products were developed specifically to support decision-making. The paper highlights three actions—elevating the importance of science-management partnerships dedicated to coproducing actionable landscape science products, identifying where landscape science could foster efficiencies in the land-use planning process, and developing scenario-based landscape models for shrublands—that could improve landscape science support for public land planners and managers.
Two speakers present restoration ecology research published in the January 2020 issue of the Natural Areas Journal: Leighton Reid shares understory plant community outcomes based on twelve years of monitoring in a woodland mosaic in Missouri as it underwent restoration via prescribed, dormant-season burning and mechanical thinning of red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) and exotic shrubs. Reid’s case study suggests that understory plant recovery may be slower in harsher and more degraded sites and faster in more mesic sites within a woodland mosaic. Mike Leahy describes plant community changes documented over 20 years of prescribed fire, herbicide treatments of invasive nonnative species, and seeding of local ecotype prairie seed at Pawnee Prairie, a 190-ha mix of remnant tallgrass prairie and formerly row-cropped prairie in Missouri. The prairie restoration practices resulted in significant gains in the natural quality of the site’s vegetation, including a greater abundance of prairie flora matrix species and some conservative species.
Access brief.
Forest Service researchers Becky Kerns and Michelle Day conducted a long-term experiment in the Malheur National Forest, Oregon, to assess how season and time between prescribed burns affect understory plant communities in ponderosa pine forests. They found that some native plants persisted and recovered from fire but didn’t respond vigorously, while invasive species tended to spread. These findings may help forest managers design more effective prescribed-fire treatments and avoid unintended consequences.
The first goal of the National Seed Strategy (developed by the Plant Conservation Alliance and through an MOU of 12 federal agencies) is to assess the national public and private demand for native plants, and the existing and potential capacity to supply them. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study is in the first phase of a two-part project to provide the holistic view needed to put the nation’s native seed supply on a more solid foundation. In the next phase, input from organizations (states, land trusts, non-profits) that needs seeds for ecological restoration is needed. This presentation will aim to make the case for getting those entities to participate in the assessment.
Access webinar recording.
Selecting species and seed from appropriate sources to maximize project success faces many challenges. This presentation will review plant selection for ecosystem diversity that supports economically and ecologically practical outcomes. Habitat degradation and loss have accelerated globally, resulting in loss of biological diversity and species endangerment at unprecedented scales. Restoring habitats that provide ecosystem services necessary for all life is crucial. One of the biggest hurdles to habitat restoration is the availability of seeds of native plants to provide a diverse and resilient base of the food chain. Plant diversity is now clearly a fundamental driver of ecosystem services and the diversity of other organisms, and native plant diversity is needed because invasive plants tend to reduce diversity and homogenize vegetation on the landscape. Seeding with native plants is one of the few reliable methods of restoring diversity at all levels, even in the face of climate change and controversial novel ecosystems. Therefore, selecting and sourcing the right plants for restoration sites is vital for the successful establishment of diverse and resilient native ecosystems. This presentation webinar will describe the results of recent published and unpublished research on local adaptation, successful creation of diverse regional seed admixtures, the importance of landscape context, and innovative species selection strategies and tools.
View fact sheet.
This longer-term study essentially shows that native seed mixes do well in suppressing cheatgrass in the Great Basin, even when compared to familiar conventional mixes that include the highly competitive nonnative crested and Siberian wheatgrass. The conventional seed mixes lived up to their reputation and were effective at keeping cheatgrass cover below 2 percent, but the native seed mixes were not far behind, with cheatgrass cover of 3 percent to 6 percent–in contrast to unseeded control treatments where cheatgrass cover reached 9 percent to 15 percent. And using native seed mixes may not be cost-prohibitive anymore—the scientists found that the price of native species seed has come down over the years to be much closer to that of introduced mixes.
Access report.
Springs serve an ecologically important role as perennial water sources, essential habitat for native species, and support for stream flow. Spring developments on rangelands provide water to livestock and wildlife. Thoughtful design of sustainable developments will supply water to livestock and wildlife while maintaining the intrinsic ecological functions and values of springs. This guide addresses spring development project planning as well as long-term sustainable management of springs. The objectives of spring development design are (1) to retain hydrologic conditions in the developed spring habitat that are similar to undeveloped reference habitats and (2) to create a system that is easy to install and maintain. Report presents two gravity-flow development designs that incorporate flow-splitting devices to regulate environmental flows and levels and to work in a wide range of hydrologic conditions.
Rick Miller, Professor Emeritus, OSU, discusses the intent and goals of his latest publication, The Ecology, History, Ecohydrology, and Management of Pinyon and Juniper Woodlands in the Great Basin and Northern Colorado Plateau in the Western United States. This includes 1) Describing the the woodlands and the vast variation across the GB and CP, 2) Telling the story of their history and variables influencing woodland expansion and contraction, and 3) Interpretation of the wide variation in responses and the variables influencing ecosystem response to restoration.
View article.
This study asked whether success in restoration seedings of the foundational species big sagebrush was related to estimated water deficit in previously burned areas in the western United States. Standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), a widely used drought index, was not predictive of whether sagebrush had reestablished. In contrast, wet-warm days elicited a critical drought threshold response, with successfully reestablished sites having experienced 7 more wet-warm days than unsuccessful sites during the first March following summer wildfire and restoration. Thus, seemingly small-scale and short-term changes in water availability and temperature can contribute to major ecosystem shifts, as many of these sites remained shrubless two decades later. These findings help clarify the definition of ecological drought for a foundational species and its imperiled semi-arid ecosystem. Drought is well known to affect the occurrence of wildfires, but drought in the year(s) after fire can determine whether fire causes long-lasting, negative impacts on ecosystems.