Resource Database

Webinar: Where road ecology and ecological restoration converge

Road ecology has made substantial advances over the last few decades. Our knowledge has increased and mitigation measures to reduce the impacts of roads and traffic on wildlife are now widespread and implemented regularly. In many cases, the mitigation measures address human safety through reducing collisions with large mammals, provide safe crossing opportunities for wildlife, and it can even make economic sense to implement these mitigation measures. These successes may be reason to celebrate, but it may also be time for us to think about whether we are missing something, where we need to do a better job. While road projects are typically linear in nature, the needs of wildlife need to be addressed based on a landscape level approach. Crossing structures for wildlife are no good if there is no suitable wildlife habitat nearby. In some cases, this means protecting existing habitat patches close to wildlife crossing opportunities. In other cases, it may mean restoring habitat close to highways or creating suitable corridors between habitat patches and safe crossing opportunities. And while the focus of many highway mitigation measures is with the movements of large wild mammals, we also need to address the needs of smaller species that may not be able to move over long distances. For these species we need food, water, and cover every step of the way as it may take them days or weeks to cross to the other side of the road. In other words, we need a shift from providing safe crossing opportunities for large mammals to restoring habitat connectivity for a wide range of species groups and perhaps even allowing physical ecosystem processes to continue between the two sides of a highway. In summary, road ecology cannot be effective without applying the principles of restoration ecology and landscape ecology. And if habitat restoration is to succeed on a landscape level, restoration and landscape ecology can benefit from road ecology.

Community Restoration in Utqiaġvik, AK

The North Slope Borough of Alaska is nearly the size of Michigan and is classified almost entirely as wetlands, giving “wetland enhancement” a new meaning. Located at the northern-most latitude in the United States, the Native village Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) is entirely surrounded by wetlands. The wet permafrost landscape, the mosquitoes it hosts, and the polar bears that occasionally wander onto land, challenge even the most intrepid traveler. The Iñupiaq people have a history of traveling far to camp in the summer to gather fish and wild plants to store for the long winter, but this tradition was mostly lost following the oil boom in the region and a switch to a cash economy. While generations of Iñupiat have subsisted on a diet of mostly meat and fat, plants have always played a special role, though in much smaller quantities than animal-based sources of food. To serve the residents of Utqiaġvik, my crew of local teenagers and I built a unique botanical garden emphasizing edible plants, of which were collected from the surrounding area. The project was meant to support public health, to serve as an Indigenous teaching instrument, and to act as an inspirational and interactive exhibit. The garden encourages people to reacquaint themselves with tundra plants and provides a means for elders who are no longer physically mobile to share their knowledge across generations without having to travel far. It is a place to learn about the plants, and the garden provides an accessible learning space for both locals and visitors to the community.

Speaker bio: Lorene Lynn is a soil scientist and restoration ecologist who specializes in permafrost characterization, tundra rehabilitation, and boreal forest restoration. She primarily works for oil and gas, government, and community clients in the Arctic and for mining, government, and private clients throughout Alaska. Lorene is a federally appointed member and Chair of the Science Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the North Slope Science Initiative (NSSI). Previously, she worked for HDR, the NRCS Soil Survey, and the USFWS. Her graduate studies on coastal erosion along the Beaufort Sea Coast of Alaska sparked a career in which she rarely experiences heat, instead working in a parka in the Arctic in the months most people associate with summer. She lives in Palmer, Alaska with her husband and dog. Her two children have launched lives of their own in Alaska.

Interim Reforestation of Soil Stockpiles

Industrial disturbances, whether in the mining or oil and gas sector, typically result in the clearing of forests and stockpiling of surface soils during the development and operational phases of industrial activity. In Alberta, operators are mandated to ensure stockpiles are stable and non-erosive, constructed in order to maximize soil surface area (shallower slopes being optimal) and that weeds or other invasive species are managed appropriately. Management of these stockpiles will be required until final reclamation activities when the facilities are removed, the site is re-contoured and stockpiled soils are spread. Historical (and present) practices include seeding with grasses and use of chemical herbicides to control establishment of noxious weeds.

Temporary reforestation of soil stockpiles, is an alternative, though not widely utilized practice that may better fit the fundamental long-term final reclamation goals in forested settings (restoring a functional forest). Potential benefits of temporary reforestation of stockpiled soil include: long-term erosion control, reduced invasion of weedy vegetation through increased forest cover and shading and increased habitat availability for wildlife. In addition, temporary reforestation is also likely to enhance the root and seed propagule bank and provide coarse woody material final reclamation.

This webinar will present an alternative approach to conventional soil stockpile management, the interim (or temporary) reforestation of soil stockpiles. In 2015, a case study was initiated on 8 hectares of an in-situ facility soil stockpile. An overview of the operational activities and findings during the first four growing seasons will be presented.

Natural Stable Channel Design

Houston and Harris County, Texas have been at the center of numerous national stories regarding disaster-level flooding in recent years. Since the year 2000, Houston has endured 10 storm events greater than the statistically-predicted 100-year precipitation event. The Harris County Flood Control District (HCFCD) has been responsible for providing flood protection to this vibrant metropolitan area of over 4.6 million people since a special purpose district created by the Texas Legislature in 1937 in response to devastating floods that struck the region in 1929 and 1935. In the 1990’s the HCFCD, in accordance with their statutory mission to “Provide flood damage reduction projects that work, with appropriate regard for community and natural values” began to incorporate the emerging technology of fluvial geomorphology and stream restoration into the development and management of their critical flood control system and infrastructure. Today, the HCFCD applies this naturalistic engineering approach wherever possible in their efforts to meet the ever-increasing flood control needs of this community that is expected to exceed a metropolitan area population of 10 million residents by 2040. This webinar will demonstrate how these efforts have been successful in proving the ability of these methodologies to provide the ultimate solution for meeting flood control, resiliency, and water quality goals for this community. It is hoped that the webinar will inform the participants sufficiently

Diversity is Magic: Emerging issues in selecting appropriate native plant materials

Creating a restoration-based rural economy and reviving traditional ecological knowledge

The webinar will present case study from India of a restoration project that combines the objectives of creating alternate livelihoods for local communities of indigenous peoples based on ecological restoration and at the same time reviving traditional ecological knowledge of indigenous groups whose connect with their natural environment is fast vanishing. The restoration project is being managed by Junglescapes, a non-profit engaged in restoring degraded forests. The project site is in a major tiger reserve in South India which lies in the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot. Junglescapes received the Full Circle Award in 2017 for its ongoing work with local communities.

A Framework for Climate-smart Restoration

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 the 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 riparian and wetland systems in California.

Speaker bio: 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. Her background is in the conservation, policy, management, and governance of public and private lands and wildlife in the western U.S. She received her Masters of Environmental Science degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2015.

Natural Processes for the Restoration of Drastically Disturbed Sites

Join Dave Polster as he discusses the restoration of drastically disturbed sites using natural processes.Learn how we can take advantage of processes that have developed over millions of years to aid in the restoration of difficult-to-restore sites. How can we develop restoration practices that work with the natural world?

Dave Polster has 43 years of experience in vegetation studies, reclamation, and invasive species management. He graduated from the University of Victoria with his BSc. in 1975 and his MSc. in 1977. He has developed a wide variety of reclamation techniques for mines, industrial developments, steep or unstable slopes, and for the re-establishment of riparian and aquatic habitats.

Rebuilding a house of cards: Restoring the equilibrium in Indonesia’s tropical peatlands

Indonesia’s extensive tropical peatland domes contain a globally critical reservoir of carbon. Their forests have become a final refuge to endangered mammals such orangutans, sun bears and clouded leopards, and provide livelihoods, environmental stability and spiritual-identity to indigenous communities.
These tropical peatlands have become severely and extensively degraded through logging and land conversion for agriculture, both requiring peatland drainage. The degraded peatlands now burn with almost annual frequency. When surface fires transition into the peat, they release toxic gases, large volumes of small particulates, and huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – the Asian Haze Crisis.

The Indonesian Government is working to rehabilitate its peatlands, but planted seedlings still die through continued fires and disturbed hydrology. Fire management efforts are often only short-term, and rewetting after drainage is extremely expensive and physically challenging. Local indigenous communities have a deep understanding of the ecology of the system, and want it to see it restored. Poor economic, livelihood, health and education options, and unclear land tenure, however, leave them feeling incapacitated.

Tropical peatlands are an ecosystem dependent on stability and equilibriums. When these are disturbed, the whole system becomes degraded, questionably past its tipping point. Restoring the balance of this equilibrium requires understanding and methods in the biophysical, social, economic and politic environment. In this webinar I will present the balance of these different factors from a case-study perspective of single peat dome: its degradation history, and the restoration efforts of my organisation, The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, BOSF-Mawas Program. I propose that implementing truly inter-disciplinary restoration for Indonesia’s peatlands is rather like building a house of cards.

Speaker – Laura Graham, BOSF-Mawas

Scaling up forest landscape restoration in Canada in an era of cumulative effects and climate change

While the global restoration movement is rapidly gaining momentum, understanding the concept and benefits of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is paramount to safeguarding the natural capital of Canada’s forests. In the face of increasing cumulative effects, we investigated the opportunities for scaling up FLR efforts in Canadian forests. The pace of industrial natural resource extraction developments (logging, agriculture, mining, and energy sector), and their overlapping in time and space with the impacts of climate change have resulted in ecosystem function and services alteration, as well as changes in natural disturbance regimes (e.g., wildland fire and pests). These dramatic and synergistic changes to environmental, socio-economic and cultural values occurring in the landscape need to be considered in land use planning but are highly variable and uncertain. We suggested that adding FLR to the land …

Selecting native plant material for restoration projects in different ecosystems

Due to loss of natural ecosystems and biodiversity around the world along the past decades, international initiatives are being developed to establish a foundation for the restoration of diverse ecosystems, prioritizing ecosystem biodiversity and resilience while also recognizing impacts on rural livelihoods and carbon storage. As programs have become more refined, a shift from revegetation with available material to using native plant materials of known genetic origin has been underway, and achieving increasing priority at an international level. Through research and collaborative partnerships, on local, regional and international levels, and between public and private sectors, approaches are being developed that addresses the challenges in using native genetic plant material in ecological restoration. Four study cases from different geographic locations and climatic conditions were selected to demonstrate the successes in using native genetic plant material, developing a baseline for native genetic resource management, and meeting challenges according to every ecosystem’s limiting factors. In Jordan’s desert ecosystem a developed native seed strategy has majorly improved seedling quality and post-planting survival rate. In the tropical ecosystem of Guinea Conakry, the major challenge is to identify best seed collection times and seed handling techniques to improve seed germination and propagation of native seedlings through seeds for the restoration of the Bossou corridor. Within Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, an emphasis is being made on the development of a traceability system for native genetic plant material used in restoration projects, considering the genetic variability within native species, starting with Cedrus atlantica. In Lebanon, considering the diverse ecosystems, a scheme for the selection of native plant material is developed within every restoration project, for dryland, riparian or forest ecosystems.

Speaker:

Karma Bouazza received her Bachelor of Science in Agriculture Engineering and her Master of Science in Plant Protection from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. She has worked since 2011 with the U.S. Forest Service International Programs in Lebanon, Jordan, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Morocco and Rwanda. Through research and collaborative partnerships, she has worked on developing approaches that addresses the challenges in using native genetic plant material in ecological restoration in diverse geographic locations and climatic conditions. Currently, she is also leading the Research and Development Component at the Lebanon Reforestation Initiative NGO, aiming at first identifying research gaps throughout the different fields of ecological restoration and wildlife conservation that hinder the sustainability of landscape management.

Moving to Industrial-Scale Coral Habitat Restoration

Jesper Elzinga, Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contractors, talks on ‘The Recovery of Reefs Using Industrial Techniques for Slick Harvesting and Release (RECRUIT)’ followed by Joaquim Garrabou, Spanish Research Council (CSIC), Barcelona on ‘Lessons Learned from Coral Restoration in Shallow and Deep Environments’. There is potential to assist the recovery of impacted coral habitats through marine ecosystem restoration, but can it be achieved at a meaningful scale? This webinar addressed some of the methods that might be used in restoration of coral habitats and their applicability at larger scales.

Fieldwork in the time of COVID-19

Join a panel of practitioners from several realms (governmental, contracting, and non-profit) to learn how they are adapting field work plans to reduce risks to practitioners and community members in the time of COVID 19. As we are all learning and adapting to this strange new world together, we’ll wrap up with time for participants to share their own ideas and ask questions of panelists and each other.

Speakers include the following SER-NW chapter board members: Jeff Barna, Ben Peterson, and Regina Wandler.

University of Montana COVID-19 Guidelines for Off-campus Field Research

Guidelines for off-campus field research developed by the University of Montana (as of May 4, 2020).

Guidelines for volunteers and volunteer organizations during COVID-19 outbreak in Washington

During this national emergency, we understand individuals who are not suffering from the coronavirus may want to help. However, all volunteer activities must follow critical health and safety protocols so we can protect volunteers, residents, clients, and agencies. This document provides general guidelines for volunteers and volunteer organizations and may be useful is developing organization-specific best practices.

Principles of Riverscape Health & Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration

In this webinar we will immerse you deeper into reading riverscapes; specifically, we will introduce the principles of riverscape health. These principles will be cast in a light to help you better recognize impairments, articulate the scope of what’s been lost, and realistically target recovery potential. Then we will introduce low-tech process-based restoration (PBR) as a means of addressing structural starvation so pervasive among many riverscapes today. We will briefly highlight six principles of low-tech PBR, which help guide restoration planning, design and implementation and more critically place our actions as ecological restoration practitioners in context. While we will focus on examples of these principles in practice for riverine and riparian ecosystmes, the mechanistic and functional focus has merit in cross-over to restoration of other ecosystems as well.

Speaker bio: Joe Wheaton is an Associate Professor Utah State and a fluvial geomorphologist with over eighteen years of experience in river restoration. Joe’s research is focused on better understanding the dynamics of riverscapes, how such fluvial processes shape instream and riparian habitats, and how biota modulate and amplify those processes. Joe o-founded the Restoration Consortium at USU and runs the Ecogeomorphology & Topographic Analysis Lab in USU’s Department of Watershed Science. Joe is also the lead author of the Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration of Riverscapes Design Manual and a principle and co-founder of a design-build restoration firm, Anabranch Solutions.

Parks and Recreation Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 Best Practices Manual

Coronavirus safety protocols developed the City of Missoula (Montana, USA), including for fieldwork done by city staff in maintaining Missoula parks and open spaces.

COVID-19 Work Protocols – Garden Cycles LLC

Safety protocols from Garden City, LLC, an organization in Washington (USA) focused on native plant restoration and invasive species control.

Five Valley Land Trust COVID-19 Phase II Protocol

Guidelines from Five Valleys Land Trust (Montana, USA) on COVID-19 safety protocols.

Is the restoration of thicket in the Albany Thicket Biome with woody species really not feasible?

It has been reported that the restoration of semi-arid thicket with woody species is not ecologically feasible in South Africa. Transformed and degraded semi-arid thicket exhibits exceedingly poor resilience with normal succession precipitating low species diversity dominated by grasses and ephemerals. The transformed and degraded mesic-thicket types have only slightly improved resilience but also limited species richness with many guilds missing – despite many decades without the drivers of degradation being present. The restoration of thicket has largely been focused on the en masse planting of one species (Portulacaria afra) with the assumption that, once established, it will facilitate the natural return of the other species, specifically the missing woody plant guild.  A lack of understanding regarding the ecophysiology of key woody species, as well as the nuances of the microclimate needed for succession has limited restoration success in the thicket. This research seeks to take a systems approach to understanding the multi-scale dynamics for the restoration of mesic-thickets, then apply the wisdom gained from this process to tackling the major challenge of effective restoration of degraded thicket areas with woody species.  The results from fifteen common woody species found in mesic thickets indicates that drought-sensitivity, germination success, seedling growth rate, herbivory, nurse-planting, tree-shelters, ponding, and other treatments have significant species-specific effects. The intimate understanding of these relationships correlated spatially and temporally with the major thresholds that limit the germination, establishment, survival, growth rate, and canopy recruitment – will enable the successful restoration of thicket with woody species.

The implications of a “project” mindset on ecological restoration at the community level – Mpophomeni township as a case study

The Mpophomeni enviro-champs are lauded as a best practice model for a community-based approach to catchment management and restoration. Vital work to help “Save Midmar Dam” has been undertaken by a handful of community members for several years, and they were recently mentioned in the Presidential Jobs Summit Framework Agreement. However, when one scratches under the surface, the tale of the Enviro-champs and their essential work is one of two steps forward, and one step back. Funding has been from several sources, over various time frames, with disparate objectives, resulting in loss of momentum, and at times disillusionment. The Mpophomeni Enviro-champs are just one example of how short-term funding cycles impact negatively on effective, sustainable ecological restoration at a community level. The approach to community-based ecological restoration needs to shift to long-term programming that is built into the “operations” of responsible authorities. The business case for this approach is clear, with the annual operating cost of maintaining community teams much lower than the cost of refurbishment, rehabilitation and/or replacement due to the lack of daily maintenance of our ecosystems. The benefit to the natural environment is only one of the impacts; the social impact within the broader community being equally important. With a long-term funding mindset, ecological restoration moves from the simple tasks of clearing, cleaning, and monitoring, to broader education and social change of an entire community and its relationship to the natural environment. Surely this should be our goal.

Restoring habitat and hope: The Sagebrush in Prisons Project

The Sagebrush in Prisons Project, a collaborative effort between the US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management, Institute for Applied Ecology, and state Departments of Correction engages multiple prisons across seven western states (CA, ID, MT, NV, OR, WA, UT) in the United States. Working with prison systems to engage inmates in habitat conservation and ecological science is an innovative approach to increase our ability to reestablish habitat and at-risk species, while simultaneously providing people in custody with opportunities for reciprocal restoration, vocational education, therapeutic activities, safer conditions, and lower costs of imprisonment. Adults in custody contribute to the conservation of Greater Sage-Grouse and its habitat, the Sagebrush Sea, by growing sagebrush plants in prison-run native plant nurseries. This distributed network of nurseries produces locally sourced sagebrush seedlings for habitat restoration on public lands, primarily in response to wildfires in priority habitat for the grouse. The quality of these sagebrush seedlings is exceptional, and first year survival is very high (>80%). Since 2014, the program has engaged over 3,500 adult and youth inmates who grew and planted over 1.1 million sagebrush seedlings. Adults in custody also receive training in horticulture and nursery production, lectures in science and conservation, and certificates for their accomplishments. Including incarcerated people in conservation and science taps into the positive potential of over 2 million inmates at over 4,000 prisons and jails in the United States and creates new partnerships for educating an underserved community and supporting large scale ecological restoration and research. 

DroneSeed: Using UAVs to conduct surveys, herbicide applications, and aerial seed deployment in forests and rangelands

DroneSeed is a Seattle-based startup that is developing software, hardware, and infrastructure for operational capacity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to conduct surveying, herbicide application, and aerial seed deployment in forests and rangelands. Their mission is to provide more efficient and rapidly scalable survey and revegetation services for myriad ecosystem management needs. They are currently paid per acre to survey, mitigate invasive species with herbicides, and plant (enabled seed) for the largest timber companies in the US. They are also partnered with The Nature Conservancy and have begun seed-based rangeland restoration work in Oregon and post-fire forest restoration work in other locations in the American West. The presentation will provide an overview of the company’s technology, review projects and milestones, and outline the research and development supporting their data-driven approach. Wildfire and other large-scale ecosystem disturbances are increasing in frequency and severity. Constraints to post-disturbance revegetation include accessibility to remote areas, difficulty distributing seed precisely at scale, invasive species mitigation, and associated costs. DroneSeed is developing a multi-pronged approach to revegetation using UAVs that is applicable to large-scale post-disturbance revegetation and native plant management at an effective cost. Their supervised classification platform is the basis for a machine learning software being developed for seed placement (i.e. micrositing) for optimizing germination and survival. DroneSeed is increasing operational capacity using swarm technology, enabling multiple heavy lift aircraft to move material payloads across restoration areas with increased precision. The company is precedent setting in the regulatory environment allowing for this work.

Secondary invasion after clearing invasive Acacia saligna in the South African fynbos

It is often assumed that clearing invasive alien species will lead to the dissipation of their negative impacts and recovery of native biodiversity. However, this is often not the case because clearing of primary invasive alien species can lead to secondary invasion by non-target species. We investigated the effects of vegetation type and application of fire during management of biomass after clearing invasive acacias on secondary invasion in the South African fynbos. Furthermore, we determined how these effects change with years after clearing. We sampled vegetation in lowland and mountain fynbos cleared of Acacia saligna using the “fell, stack and burn” method. During burning of the stacked slash, the area at the centre of the stack experiences a high severity fire while the area at the edge experiences a low severity fire. After fire, burn scars remain in place of the stacked slash. We sampled in and outside of 80 burn scars over three years after clearing. We identified 32 secondary invader species. Secondary invader cover was lower where there were no fires compared to where there were high severity fires (27%) and low severity fires (30%). Three years after clearing, secondary invader richness and cover remained similar to or higher than in the first year, while secondary invader richness was similar between lowland and mountain fynbos. We conclude that practicing restoration ecologists have to manage these species to ensure successful restoration of native biodiversity.

Seeds and stewards of the future: A U.S. collaboration

As the foundation of healthy functioning ecosystems, native plant communities buffer the impacts of extreme events such as wildfires, invasives, and prolonged drought. Under the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) “multiple-use” mandate, there is a significant need for locally adapted, native plant materials to restore and support resilient ecosystems. BLM leads Seeds of Success (SOS), a U.S. native seed collection program, in partnership with numerous other federal agencies and non-federal organizations. SOS was established in 2001 as the first step in the Native Plant Materials Development Process, with the mission to collect wildland native seed for research, development, germplasm conservation, and ultimately ecosystem restoration. Portions of each collection are held in long-term storage facilities for conservation. SOS has a national protocol to coordinate seed collecting and species targeting efforts. To date, SOS has more than 24,400 native seed collections through its diverse network. SOS includes many partners, such as arboreta, zoos, municipalities, and botanic gardens, including Chicago Botanic Garden, which developed the Conservation and Land Management (CLM) internship program. The CLM program places 75-100 early-career scientists in five-month paid internships to assist professionals with projects, including SOS.​ Since 2001, the CLM program has successfully placed over 1500 interns, providing them with a rich experience from which to launch their professional careers. The success of both CLM and SOS are contingent upon each other and the highly qualified interns who have made the majority of SOS collections.

Peatland degradation: From fire to restoration – southern African case studies

Peatlands compose 50% of the world’s wetlands, host a third of terrestrial carbon, and 10% of fresh water resources. However, the occurrence, functioning, and value of peatlands in drier climates, such as southern Africa, is poorly understood and their conservation status unsure. During the recent extensive regional drought, peat fires were reported from the wetter east in the Kingdom of Swaziland (KoS) and coastal KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa (SA), and the drier west in North West Province (SA) with the latest fire reported in 2019 in the southern Western Cape Province (SA). Degraded peatlands turn from carbon sinks to sources. Peatland desiccation results from the draining of peat pores, oxidation of the peat, compaction, hydrophobicity, and eventual collapse of the accumulated peat due to impacts such as drainage, erosion, or water abstraction. Peatland restoration can be complex, and therefore expensive, with varying levels of success. Not only hydrology, geomorphology and vegetation dynamics need be considered, but also a suite of microbial communities and bio-chemical processes must to be in place. A peat fire is the (burning of the) last straw resulting in the total collapse of these sensitive ecosystems. Restoration of peatlands should therefore aim to address the impacts first that resulted in the desiccation (e.g. water abstraction upstream from the peatland or an erosion gully draining it). This study focuses on five fire-scarred peatlands in SA and KoS and the success of restoration efforts using various techniques.

Community asynchrony rather than climate change determine the temporal stability of plant community biomass: A 20-year experimental study in eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Climate changes have the potential to influence the temporal stability of plant community biomass in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, but most studies were based on short-term field climate manipulation experiments, the response of biomass stability of natural alpine meadow remain largely unexplored. We conduct a 20-year experimental study in eastern QTP with linear regressions and a path analysis of annual temperature, annual temperature range, annual precipitation, annual precipitation distribution, biomass stability of grass, biomass stability of forb, community asynchrony to assess the influence climate change and biological factors on the temporal stability of plant community biomass, we find that it was community asynchrony rather than climate change determine the temporal stability of plant community biomass and alpine meadow ecosystems are resistant to climate change. Our findings suggest that future climate change may have considerable uncertainty about the temporal stability of plant community biomass in the alpine meadow and we should combine with both field climate manipulation experiments and long-term observational experiments to assess the influence of climate change on the temporal stability of plant community biomass.

Genetic identity and genetic purity: Who cares?

Assume that you as a plant professional are in charge of restoring a compromised landscape as it was pre-disturbance, or at least revegetate it to similar ecological form and function. You find seeds in the marketplace that appear applicable to your project at a price you can afford and order them delivered. You end up with a very nice pile of bags, bins, or boxes. Do you care if they are labeled correctly with the proper species, germplasm notation, and provenance (i.e., genetic identity)?  Do you care if the delivered seeds possess the genetic traits (and include minimal off-types or contaminants) representative of the natural populations or germplasm selections that you specified (i.e., genetic purity)?  If you do care, do you have the resources available to accomplish your own investigation before planting to verify genetic identity and genetic purity?  If you don’t have the resources, you might want to learn about seed certification schemes for native seeds applicable in your part of the world that provide traceability of origin and collection and that ensure compliance with high standards for cultivated multiplication. Sampling and testing may also be required so that the seed purity and viability is known. In this presentation, we will briefly present to you existing examples of seed certification frameworks worldwide, address the basics of the certification process and what is really necessary, and welcome your input and opinions on this topic.

Determining optimal germination cues for use in restoration seeding in a lowland Fynbos ecosystem

Invasive alien plants impact ecosystems, which often necessitates their removal. Where indigenous species recovery fails following removal alone, active seed reintroduction of native species may be needed. This study investigated the potential for combined smoke and heat pre‐treatment of seeds in breaking dormancy and facilitating increased germination. Selected species represent different functional types in the Cape Flats Sand Fynbos; a fire‐prone, critically endangered vegetation type in South Africa. Seeds were exposed to either a heat pulse (temperatures between 60 and 300°C for durations between 30 s and 20 min) or dry after‐ripening (1 or 2 months at milder temperatures of 45°C or less). Thereafter, seeds were soaked in smoke solution for 18 h and subsequently placed on agar at 10/20°C for germination. Most species fell into one of two main groups: Seed germination in the first group was greatest following a lower temperature (60°C) heat pulse, an extended period of mild temperatures (20/40°C or 45°C) exposure, or no pre‐treatment with heat. Seed germination in the second group was promoted after brief exposure to higher (100°C) temperatures. No germination occurred in any species following heat treatments of 150°C or higher. Species that responded better to higher temperatures were mainly those possessing physical dormancy, but seed morphology did not correlate with germination success. This study showed that heat stimulation of seeds is more widespread in fynbos plant families than previously known and will enable development of better seed pre‐treatment protocols before large‐scale sowing as an active restoration treatment after alien plant clearing.

The role of seeding density, species composition, and abiotic constraints to competitively exclude Phragmites re-invasion in Great Salt Lake wetland restorations

Invasive species are a global environmental challenge that have contributed to degradation of wetland ecosystems. Phragmites australis is of particular concern in wetlands, particularly in the Great Salt Lake wetlands of the U.S. Intermountain West, as it rapidly outcompetes native species that provide important ecosystem functions. While seed-based restoration is a promising restoration strategy following P. australis control, recruitment following seeding is often unpredictable and largely unsuccessful. Seed sowing density is an important consideration, though few guidelines exist for optimal seeding density in wetland restoration. Furthermore, competitive exclusion of invaders depends not only on initial seeding density, but also the composition (i.e. functional roles/traits) of native species and environmental conditions. To address these context-dependencies, we conducted two mesocosm experiments investigating: 1) the influence of P. australis density and the density of a mix of diverse native species on recruitment, and 2) the effect of water and nutrient availability on competitive interactions. For experiment 1, mesocosms were sown with P. australis seeds at three densities and a native seed mix at four densities. We found that higher native seeding densities resulted in increased native biomass, but only when P. australis propagule pressure was greatly reduced. In the second experiment, we identified the species and sowing densities that were better able to exclude P. australis across a range of environmental conditions. Taken together, these results provide a better understanding of the context dependency of competitive interactions in wetland restoration, which can be used to maximize wetland restoration outcomes with limited seed supplies.