Restoration
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Rangelands are often ignored in the discussion of using management to sequester carbon; however, demonstrating that carbon storage could be paid by carbon credit markets would be a significant advancement for rangeland conservation. The additional amount and cost of carbon sequestered was quantified by simulating seeding perennial grass and shrub species in sagebrush shrublands dominated by non-native annual grass and forb species (NNAGF) compared with doing nothing in a 485 623 km² area of interest (AOI) centered around Nevada, United States.
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Restoration of the foundational species, big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.), of the sagebrush steppe biome has not kept pace with the loss of habitat, demanding new tools to improve its restoration. Seed enhancement technology (SET) is one approach that is increasingly being tested in native plant restoration as a means to overcome establishment barriers. Like many semiarid shrubs, sagebrush faces establishment barriers from inadequate moisture, competition from faster-growing grasses, and limited available nutrients. We performed a series of laboratory trials testing whether nutrient amendments could be applied to sagebrush seed using a SET to increase root length and biomass, thereby potentially increasing seedling survival. We initially tested 11 amendments applied directly to bare seeds; of these, a high-phosphorus fertilizer resulted in a 2.7x increase in root biomass and 71-mm increase in root length over the control. We then tested incorporating this fertilizer at multiple concentrations into a pellet SET and a ground dust. Although the fertilizer, particularly at higher concentrations, conferred some enhancement to seedling biomass, the pellet treatments had substantially lower emergence and survival than bare seed and dust treatments. These results indicate the potential for a “root-enhancement” SET to benefit sagebrush and other species like it; they also illustrate some of the challenges of SET development for native species. Sagebrush has small seeds that typically need light to germinate. Further work is needed to develop an appropriate technology that does not negatively impact emergence but still provides enough nutrients for enhanced root growth. Field testing is also needed to determine if increases in root growth translate into greater survival. Given the low success rate of sagebrush seeding in restoration projects, however, we suggest that it is worth considering root-enhancement SET alongside other efforts to improve sagebrush establishment success.
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The National Native Seed Conference (NNSC) is excited to announce a virtual conference in 2024! The NNSC connects research, industry, land management, and restoration professionals, providing the premier opportunity to develop relationships and share information about the collection, research and development, production, and use of native plant materials.
Our next event will be a virtual conference on February 7-8, 2024. The conference will be held from 8am – 2pm Pacific.
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This year’s meeting will be January 28-February 1, 2024 in Sparks, NV.
Webinar recording.
The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) has co-authored a new set of “Standards of Practice to Guide Ecosystem Restoration”, launched this year in partnership with the FAO and IUCN-CEM as a contribution to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Furthermore, various principles and standards guidance have been released or are under development since 2019, including the WWF-SER Mediterranean forest project certification standards, aiming to verify the quality of field-based restoration projects, providing guidance, structure, and an auditing process for ecological restoration.
In this SUPERB/IUFRO Forest Restoration Talk, organised in collaboration with SER, George Gann, SER’s International Policy Lead, presents an overview of the new Standards of Practice including insights from the Mediterranean project, discussing how these can support the design, implementation, and funding of restoration actions.
He is joined by Dr.Michael Kleine, Deputy Executive Director & Coordinator at IUFRO’s Special Programme for Development of Capacities, who provides views from a science and training perspective with reference to existing forest-related restoration guidelines, sharing experiences with implementing some of these on the ground.
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The sagebrush biome is a dryland region in the western United States experiencing rapid transformations to novel ecological states. Threat-based approaches for managing anthropogenic and ecosystem threats have recently become prominent, but successfully mitigating threats depends on the ecological resilience of ecosystems. We used a spatially explicit approach for prioritizing management actions that combined a threat-based model with models of resilience to disturbance and resistance to annual grass invasion. The threat-based model assessed geographic patterns in sagebrush ecological integrity (SEI) to identify core sagebrush, growth opportunity, and other rangeland areas. The resilience and resistance model identified ecologically relevant climate and soil water availability indicators from process-based ecohydrological models. The SEI areas and resilience and resistance indicators were consistent – the resilience and resistance indicators showed generally positive relationships with the SEI areas. They also were complementary – SEI areas provided information on intact sagebrush areas and threats, while resilience and resistance provided information on responses to disturbances and management actions. The SEI index and resilience and resistance indicators provide the basis for prioritizing conservation and restoration actions and determining appropriate strategies. The difficulty and time required to conserve or restore SEI areas increase as threats increases and resilience and resistance decrease.
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It is not well understood whether desert plantings can facilitate recruitment of other natives (or mainly just non-natives), or whether facilitation changes through time as a restoration site matures. To address these uncertainties, we partnered with the National Park Service to study plant community change below planted perennials and in interspaces (areas between perennials) during 12 years (2009-2020) in Joshua Tree National Park, California, in the southern Mojave Desert.
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This study used geospatial seed transfer zones as our focal management areas. We broadly considered generalized provisional seed transfer zones, created using climate and stratified by ecoregion, but also present results for empirical seed transfer zones, based on species‐specific research, as part of our case study. Historic fire occurrence was effective for prioritizing seed transfer zones: 23 of 132 provisional seed transfer zones burned every year, and, within each ecoregion, two provisional seed transfer zones comprised ≧50% of the total area burned across all years. Fire occurrence within PACs largely reflected the seed transfer zone priorities found for the ecoregion as a whole. Our results demonstrate that historic disturbance can be used to identify regions that encounter regular or large disturbance. This information can then be used to guide seed production, purchase, and storage, create more certainty for growers and managers, and ultimately increase restoration success.
Rising from Ashes: A Tribe’s Nature-based Approach to Watershed Restoration will highlight an innovative and iconic case study in public and private collaboration on sovereign tribal lands following a series of catastrophic wildfires. Given the increasing frequency of these fires, there is a vital need to mitigate destruction through preemptive nature-based restoration practices before disaster strikes. By collaborating with federal agencies and other partners to incorporate indigenous knowledge and values into the recovery planning process, the Santa Clara Pueblo is working to achieve long-term, sustainable resiliency of the watershed.
The purpose of this Stewardship in Action Field Workshop is not simply to share what was learned by the Santa Clara Pueblo and their many partners, but also to engage land and water management practitioners from tribal nations, federal and state agencies, and nonprofit organizations from around the continent to share information and leverage success for the benefit of local communities.
The agenda features three days of content featuring both indoor presentations and field experiences. Sessions will explore public and private collaboration on sovereign tribal lands, process-based restoration and watershed resilience, forestry and fire management, sediment stabilization, native plant restoration, indigenous knowledge, nature-based solutions, and preparing for future climate impacts by working together.
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The South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (SC CASC) highlighted one of their funded projects, Time to Restore: Connecting People, Plants, and Pollinators, through the webinar series – The Southern Plains Climate Science Webinar Series.
Watch to learn how this project involves the pollinator restoration community through the entire process to assist them with climate-informed guidance on the timing of nectar plant flowering and seeding. Better knowledge of climate impact on flowering and seed timing for critical nectar plants can inform more resilient restoration plantings.
Jane Breckinridge, the Director of the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators, and Erin Posthumus, the Outreach Coordinator for the USA National Phenology Network and the Principle Investigator of this SC CASC-funded project, will share their perspectives on this project which recently received a second funding award to continue their work.