The purpose of this post is to present an example of the challenges facing the Illinois Nature Preserves System and to seek productive discussions of remedies. Much of what's important in this post is at the end, under "Comments" by interested people.
 |
| In this mid-morning GoogleEarth photo, cottonwoods are shading about half of the middle part of this prairie Nature Preserve. Prairie does not survive in shade. |
Technical facts
1. The entire preserve is 1.3 acres
2. It was dedicated by the Morton Grove Bicentennial Commission and "preserved for future generations as a natural heritage" in September 1975.
3. It was identified in 1978 by the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory as one of the highest quality black-soil prairies remaining in the Prairie State.
4. It was legally made an Illinois Nature Preserve in October 1979 with an assumption and social contract that commits us in the future, as much as possible, to maintaining its biodiversity permanently.
5. It is owned and managed by the Morton Grove Park District.
6. According to the Nature Preserves statute, the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources could and should help with technical advice and resources, but they're spread very thin.
The current state of the preserve
1. Brush and degradation by weeds now cover well over 90% of the preserve. Of that, roughly 75% is dense enough to shade out nearly all prairie species and 25% is progressively degrading but still to some degree recoverable.
 |
| Most of the former prairie here is today densely covered in brush. In this photo, purplish dogwood is in the foreground and red sumac in the rear. |
2. Very little high-quality prairie appears to survive here. How recoverable is this preserve? The answer could be determined only through expert management.
3. A bigger problem than the small brush in some areas is the stand of increasingly tall and dense cottonwood trees that block the sun from large areas during much of each morning. Prairie species, by millions of years of adaptation, need full sun. Most true prairie plants and animals do not survive in partial-day sun.
4. Two small patches of actual prairie survive, as determined by the continuing presence of conservative prairie plants. The best, about ten feet in diameter, is partially mowed for one of the trails. It is northwest of the observation platform, a bit further from the cottonwood shade, and includes such species as purple prairie clover, downy phlox, alumroot, prairie dropseed, little bluestem, wild quinine, sky-blue aster, Indian grass, prairie dock, compass plant, gray goldenrod, rattlesnake master, obedient plant, and stiff gentian. A larger but poorer remnant, roughly 50 feet in diameter, lies near the southern edge of the preserve. It has fewer high-quality species and few or no plants of dropseed or little bluestem, but it seems readily recoverable with burning and seeding, using seed from the smaller, higher-quality patch or other, similar, high-quality prairies nearby, if approved.
 |
| An observation platform was installed with the objective of allowing people to view this delicate little prairie without trampling it. Intentions were good. |
 |
| A remnant patch about ten feet across (here in the foreground) still contains many of the conservative plants that characterize a true prairie remnant. |
 |
| How many visitors would perceive what's going on in this photo? Red sumac blazes to the left of a mowed path. Green buckthorn is to the right. Prairie grass, tawny or yellow, is visible in the foreground, mowed and unmowed. |
 |
| Here a tiny patch of cordgrass and prairie dock is surrounded by dense buckthorn, dogwood, and a third major problem, especially in the partial shade, the weedy tall goldenrod. |
 |
| Under dense sumac, no remaining prairie is visible. |
 |
| The view under the dogwood. When the prairie is this far gone, most plant species may not be capable of coming back without being seeded. |
 |
| The preserve is not difficult to burn. It is surrounded by a blacktop trail and mowed lawn. Frequent burns are crucial to prairie ecosystem health. |
Other bits of history
The prairie was discovered by Marion Cole and Mary Hellen Slater in the 1970s.
When this remnant was initially protected, some parts were somewhat degraded. It was reasonable to expect that with good management the entire preserve would recover its richness of plant species, and the restored larger habitat would help conserve many of the rare pollinators and other animals that are interdependent with the prairie plants.
For many years this Nature Preserve was largely managed for the Park District by the North Branch Restoration Project, during which time the Park District paid the Project $1,000 per year. This volunteer group still manages the ten-acre Wayside Prairie (not an original high-quality remnant, but recovering very well), in the Cook County Forest Preserves two blocks to the east.
A YouTube video on Morton Grove Prairie by Chris Breitenbach includes an interview with Mary Hellen Slater's husband John and shows North Branch volunteers Mary Busch, Kent Fuller, and others burning the prairie. This video was made in 2009 and shows the prairie as it looked then. As of October 24, 2023, this video had been viewed 756 times.
The Nature Preserve is a part of “Prairie View Park” which also contains “Prairie View Community Center.” Both lie immediately north of “Prairie View Plaza Shopping Center” – all of which were named after this Nature Preserve prairie. It's likely that most Morton Grove residents imagine that the prairie is being cared for by someone.
Indeed, part of the problem here (and for Nature Preserves generally) may be that most people would expect that all Illinois Nature Preserves certainly must be getting the care they need through official channels. Many are not. They need more.
Saving nature depends in part on organizations and institutions. But it also depends on initiative from individuals who care. This prairie would today be a housing subdivision, or a baseball diamond, or part of Prairie View Shopping Plaza if it had not been for public spirited advocacy by John and Mary Hellen Slater and her botanist friend Marion Cole, who had in turn been inspired by their friend, early prairie volunteer Robert Betz.
Once dedicated as a Nature Preserve, over the years this site received care from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, Morton Grove Park District, North Branch Restoration Project, and other stakeholders. They deserve credit for their many good efforts. But Illinois Nature Preserves grew to more than 600 sites while staff and resources were shrinking.
Individuals and the general public are especially crucial. Trained volunteers can provide a level of detailed care that agencies often can't match. Public support helps determine levels of funding, which are currently too low to respond to many needs of many Nature Preserves. Substantially increased resources, expert staff, and dedicated volunteers are crucial.
When we first shared the draft of this post, we learned that Jeffrey Wait, Executive Director of the Morton Grove Park District, had already been talking about the state of the preserve with Matt Evans of Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves and the Chicago Botanic Garden. As of March 4, 2024, the Friends began working with the Park District to seek stewardship volunteers, so if you're interested, contact them here.
For this site and for challenges to Nature Preserves generally, it is hoped that Comments below (including one from you?) will contribute to resurgence for nature, biodiversity, and the communities of people who care.
Acknowledgements
Credit goes to all the people and agencies that have cared for this prairie over the years.
Thanks to Eriko Kojima for wise edits to this post.
Only "about ten feet in diameter" of the best survives. That is just sad. My native plant garden is bigger than that amount of area.
ReplyDeleteThis would not be an easy restoration. Gray dogwood can be controlled. However, staghorn sumac is much more difficult. Once staghorn sumac is killed, what tends to grow is seven-foot-tall goldenrod, teasel, and other weeds. I have not figured out how to turn tall goldenrod monocultures back into prairie. The truth is, it would be easier to turn a soybean field into prairie vegetation than a copse of sumac.
I agree that it's easy to control brush, especially in small areas, but often not so easy to nurse a lost prairie back to good health. Some brush control actions hurt the prairie even more than the brush did. Many preserve landowners don't have the necessary expertise. A critical role for Nature Preserve staff (and expert volunteers?) is to provide expert advice to owners on stewardship. The staff doesn't necessarily need to have that expertise on every question, but they need to know who to recommend.
DeleteI know how to control the dogwood and sumac without harming prairie plants. It takes more time, which it why people tend to choose the faster method of applying triclopyr ester in basal oil to bark.
DeleteI have been applying glyphosate to cuts around stems (frilling). This is my go-to fool-proof safe method. I apply glyphosate to frills if rain is forecast within four days. Applying triclopyr ester in basal oil will kill the brush, but if rain occurs too soon then unacceptable off-target damage will occur. Rain not being predicted within four days is my minimum. Longer is better if triclopyr ester in basal oil is being applied.
Sumac and dogwood can be controlled using selective methods on a preserve of this size. When you start getting hundreds or thousands of acres of sumac, dogwood, buckthorn etc. treating individual stems becomes impractical. A tractor mounted wicking bar is what would be needed.
The problem then becomes, "What grows after the dogwood and sumac have been killed?" Tall goldenrod can outcompete prairie plants. When I stop weeding tall goldenrod out of native plant gardens it reestablishes and expands over time. I have seen good prairie turn into tall goldenrod near monocultures. Maybe this could be prevented with frequent fire. Fire might shift the nutrient balance in favor of prairie. People have said they have seen prairie out compete tall goldenrod and I must wonder if frequent fire is the reason.
Regardless, once gray dogwood or sumac invasion has reached a certain threshold, getting it to return to quality prairie vegetation is much more difficult.
I should mention that when applying triclopyr ester in basal oil I use the "no-drip" technique I described in a comment on a previous post. I also only apply this herbicide during the dormant season. The reason I only apply triclopyr ester in basal oil during the dormant season is I have seen damage to adjacent vegetation from vapors that I believe were unacceptable when I applied this herbicide on a cool day in April. I have not assessed when in fall application of this herbicide becomes safe. Consequently, I wait until after the first hard frost.
DeleteMy emotional side wants to save all the sites but that may not be realistic. This gets into the question of what the goals should be. I think a good “big hat” goal is to put our efforts into sites that have the most potential for successful restoration & have the best chance of surviving future threats like climate change, especially sites surrounded by lower quality land that could serve as buffer & corridors for pollinators. Also, sites that have special qualities such as education potential or unique plant communities. But resources are scarce & not likely to improve much, plus successful restoration requires consistent effort over many years. That suggests we should be all-in on a fewer number of sites rather than thinly spread among many sites.
ReplyDeleteI’d like to see a process where sites in an ecoregion are visited in a quick walk through to assess current ecological condition (which may be already completed for INPC sites per your 1/12/20 blog post) & then comparatively rated for qualities like the ones I mentioned. The link below illustrates one approach. Then a weeding out process for each ecoregion based on current & future resource availability, with the end goal of not having people working on a medium or poorly rated site if they could be making a difference at a nearby highly rated site. Which means some sites will be abandoned, which is sad but perhaps necessary. In the same vein, portions of a highly rated site may need to be abandoned or considered a buffer in order to focus resources where they will do the most good.
https://toolkit.climate.gov/tool/resilient-and-connected-landscapes
Don, your "big picture" thinking is very much what's needed. Biodiversity conservationists are spread too thin. Prioritization is needed. But vastly more resources are also needed, and they are attainable. They would be donated by foundations and individuals as well as appropriated by legislatures - IF we can make the importance and urgency clear.
DeleteOn the other hand, Morton Grove Prairie Nature Preserve could easily have been saved by a few Individual stewards - if they had effective staff facilitation. But somehow, the system broke down.
Yes, an overall "assessment of current ecological condition" of the 600+ Illinois Nature Preserves is an important need. Sadly, you had too much confidence in the attempt represented by the 1/12/20 blog post. It was an early attempt. To do it well would require a lot of scarce resources - especially resources of human expertise. But a prioritized list of urgent needs is a critical next step. For the ambitious Illinois Natural Areas Inventory in the 1970s, staff were supported by expert volunteers to assemble an authoritative inventory that led to initiative and resources. Perhaps something on that model would work again. I meet many capable volunteer biodiversity conservationists who are eager to know what true priorities are.
As stated above by Don Osmu d, this story underscores the need for a comprehensive monitoring network that could visit each site (over 600 total) either every year or every other year to do a rapid assessment (Google form or FQA) and communicate with INPC/Friends to categorize, rank, and discuss priorities/opportunities. Another important need for the immediate future is baseline monitoring (likely transect and inventory data) to illustrate present conditions. A picture tells a thousand words - and those should be used too for documentation of the landscape!
ReplyDelete"Just the facts" -- but the facts are so horrifying. Yet I see the red sumac stretching before the boardwalk outlook and wonder how many people look and say, "What majestic colors! Isn't nature beautiful!" Many people visiting a preserve might observe what's growing and be tempted to appreciate what they see, because they don't know any better. For a lot of people I know (and for myself until I got involved in this work), the tendency is to find intrigue in what's there in front of us, and it takes a deeper appreciation to feel the appropriate reaction. How do such "facts" get broader readership?
ReplyDeleteRebeccah highlights an important perspective. Good ecosystem management is important. But equally important, especially for preserves on public land, is sensitivity to public perception and effective public education. Given the skepticism in some quarters about scientists and public officials - dedicated and well informed volunteer stewards are often an important part of public outreach.
DeleteKill the cottonwoods and mow, burn, seed, mow, mow, mow, burn, seed...
ReplyDeleteMowing and burning repeatedly has been tried. It tends to decrease the size of woody stems but increase the amount. More stems means more time controlling them with herbicide later if a selective application is used. Although thinner stems will allow triclopyr ester in basal oil to be better transported through bark increasing effectiveness when doing basal bark application.
DeleteIf burning is stopped, then a thicket of the various woody invasive species quickly forms shading the prairie vegetation to death.
I have seen it happen numerous times. However, locating a reference escapes me at the moment.
For me, the most troubling part of this site's degradation is the advance of dogwood into quality prairie. I happen to steward a Nature Preserve that get's a lot of attention -- i.e., rigorous removal of invasive non-native brush and herbaceous weeds and frequent fire. The response of native forbs has been remarkable. But now roughly 10 years after some areas have been "restored", grey dogwood is increasing in numbers, with tens of thousands of small stems per acre in some areas. I'm going to start with some controls this year but I'm frankly daunted with the challenge of treating so many thousands of stems by hand on a 50-acre site. James mentioned the possible use of a tractor mounted wicking bar. If we are serious about the need to start controlling dogwood on high quality sites, perhaps we need to start investing in this type of equipment. I'm familiar with TNC's successful use of this practice at some downstate sites but haven't heard about any use in northeastern Illinois. Any thoughts/suggestions?
ReplyDeletehttps://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2021/08/26/weed-wiper/
DeleteDennis and James make important points. At Somme we've had instructive experiences - some failures and some successes. We've been working to write them up in detail. This discussion inspires us to get that done, and when it is, we'll publish it on this blog. But sites with ecosystem health challenges (like human patients) differ greatly, and there are not likely to be simple one-approach-fits-all solutions.
DeleteComments by Dr. Dennis Nyberg, professor and natural areas researcher, University of Illinois Chicago, retired. And perhaps equally importantly, for decades the steward of Cranberry Slough Nature Preserve.
ReplyDeleteManagement needs are complex and diverse, but just repeated fire (simple management) would do a lot for most preserves. Superficial monitoring is a minor need.
I don’t see more inventories and monitoring as the best way to spend money. (The original Illinois Natural Areas Inventory focused best on prairies. It did not do a good job of identifying natural oak woodlands.)
When Bill Glass was responsible for Iroquois County State Wildlife Area, it got burned regularly, and I thought it was the best natural area in IL, now other sites are where I take students. Revis Hill Prairie NP is another site that’s suffered from lack of needed fire.
The focus of Nature Preserves ought to be on preserving the species of the area rather than forbidding leaving trails, collecting small plant parts for personal use, fishing etc. We need more people out enjoying and using nature. That is how they come to love it.
Trees grow. In 1900 trees were harvested for many purposes. Preventing further harvest on conservation land was important at that time. Now there are bigger trees with shade and water usage that prevent the understory and its insects from flourishing. Conservation people need to support removal of large trees when fire hasn’t been sufficient to keep the canopy open enough for most original plant and animal species.
I believe there needs to be more emphasis on the species that a nature preserve is protecting. Priority species have to have a population (greater than a dozen individuals) with recruitment (or potential for recruitment) and have a greater population at that preserve than other preserves. Populations can be measured concretely; communities cannot. I have maintained an interest in Cranberry Slough nature preserve though I no longer have an official role. I have a list of 17 plants species that CSNP plays a special role in maintaining regionally, i.e. have populations at Cranberry that are bigger than other regional sites that I have visited. If each preserve had a list of such species, it would direct attention to management and provide a measure of management success.
Tomlinson Nature Preserve (Champaign Co FP) does have too many hazel, and they are suppressing herbaceous vegetation. The only special species at Tomlinson (I only visited twice in last couple years) is another woody, Celastrus scandens, the native bittersweet which I heard is being considered for state listing. I am guessing the bittersweet preservation will make hazel reduction more difficult. There were only a few hazel plants at Cranberry and prescribed burning killed all, but when I visited Cedar Creek (in MN) the plot that had been burnt most frequently, 17 times in 30 years, had an understory dominated by hazel. Not easy to make generalizations in vegetation management.
I have seen good and bad results from herbicide use. I have an affection for the ways of non-economic people (e.g. indigenous) and consider the economy as the main source of loss of native plants. I believe in 50 years some of the current use of herbicide by conservation agencies will be looked on as we currently look at multiflora rose.
At Rocky Glen in Peoria there is savanna on the steep ridges. Rocky Glen impressed me as a once nice site that is dying. Many native species are hanging on (the species list would look impressive), but very few desirable natives are producing seed. Some individual plants can live 100 years, but if they are not producing seed that successfully recruits young individuals the species will disappear.
Good luck persuading people to pay attention to nature and making sure it persists into the future. The fact that the state of Illinois is no longer in financial straits offers hope.
Dennis W Nyberg
31 Oct 2023
Dr. Nyberg's thoughtful comments were too long to be accepted in full by this blog's platform. The full comments can be accessed as a separate post at: https://woodsandprairie.blogspot.com/2023/11/improving-health-of-nature-preserves.html
DeleteI like your emphasis on direct action instead of intense monitoring. As Randy & you pointed out, most of us don’t have the time or expertise for formal, complicated monitoring. But as I said in another comment, a quick visit to determine if a given INPC site is worth saving is essential to avoid wasting more scarce resources. Some volunteers have enough expertise to start thinking about which site is the best use of their talents without waiting for a statewide survey.
DeleteI also like your idea of adding a species list to a management plan as a way to monitor restoration progress, but preserving those species shouldn’t be at odds with the goal of improving the health & diversity of rare communities. A far as I know, resilience strongly correlates to community composition & not so much to individual species. For example, I’m monitoring a federally threatened plant that is declining within a high quality remnant, possibly due to increasing native bunchgrass competition. I’d like to save that species but I don’t think it’s a good idea to alter what appears to be a naturally progressing community. It might be hard to create a species list that accurately reflects community health.
We should continue trying to figure out an easy way to monitor restoration progress. I’ve seen too many rudderless projects.
While it seems desireable to get more "on board" the building of teams dilutes responsibility and often results in "others are going to get the job done". Personally I think finding, training and assisting individuals that love the site preserves important feature more than building coalitions. Love conquers rules.
ReplyDeleteThis comment was submitted by Randy Nyboer, for decades one of the "Founding Parents" of the Illinois Nature Preserves System while working professionally with the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory, Department of Natural Resources, and Natural History Survey:
ReplyDeleteThe causes of the demise or degrading of natural areas are sometimes obvious, sometimes not. The remedies may be also obvious or not – or even unknown to the best experts. Some sort of training for evaluating natural quality features is needed, perhaps like what we used in the INAI (Illinois Natural Areas Inventory). Part of what I have observed and heard from staff and volunteers is that INAI evaluations are too complex for most people to learn. They want a quick fix to learning this stuff. That’s not easy, especially if you are only doing it a few times a year and are not deeply familiar with ecology and threats to the natural communities you are monitoring. While species lists are a good tool, there needs to be more to the evaluation. Some folks, seeing a natural area for the first time and knowing it was an INAI site, are confused about how it could look so poor now and yet have been an INAI site. But 15 to 40 years of succession and non-management have changed these sites profoundly. Often, people think because it is an INAI site, it should still look pristine. I look at northwestern Illinois, my old Region 1. Here we were without a dedicated INPC staff person for nearly 30 years! (This is not besmirching the good work some staff did, but they were limited by being based a long distance away. Like INPC, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources has had staff vacancies in 3 districts in the region for nearly as long. The funding wasn’t there. INPC and DNR staff can fill in for each other in emergencies to some degree. But with such severe and long-term gaps in staff coverage, monitoring and management efforts have been limited, especially now with more than 600 preserves statewide.
There is just no way around the need for more people with a lot of field experience across lots of types of sites of varying quality and solid and varied ecological and natural history educations that allow them to synthesize and apply concepts and principals to a wide range of situations.
DeleteAt first, I thought, "Dr. Nyberg is wrong! We need monitoring." I then took a refresher looked at Deming's 14 points.
ReplyDeletePoint Number Three
Stop Depending on Inspections.
-Inspections are costly and unreliable - and they don't improve quality, they merely find a lack of quality.
-Build quality into the process from start to finish.
-Don't just find what you did wrong, eliminate the wrongs altogether.
-Use statistical control methods - not just physical inspection alone - to prove that the process is working.
Statistical control is a science in and of itself. You must consider that it is impossible to collect all data that might be desired and ask yourself "What do I need to know?" This is how statistics should be helping. Statistics allows a person to collect only enough data to reach an acceptable level of confidence in the findings.
Here is Julianne Mason's version of a monitoring program. It is less about monitoring and more about planning next steps.
https://www.nachusagrasslands.org/monitoring.html
Also, Mrs. Mason does quality control to verify the process is working rather than collecting data on every management action.
https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2019/09/09/the-case-of-the-undead-buckthorn-foliar-treatments-with-triclopyr-herbicide/
Dan Carter learned a lot of statistics while earning his degree. This, and his broad knowledge of natural areas, would make him a good person to consult on the data that is necessary to collect for maintaining natural area quality at Illinois State Nature Preserves.
Funny thing is I rely on statistics a lot less. FQA is (esp. mean C) is great, but it doesn't tell you everything. Some (including me) have developing coarse metrics approaches centered on the concept of ecological integrity, which considers the good and not so good elements of composition and structure as they relate to core ecological processes and scores each independently. I like these, because they point to underlying problems and relate to management actions.
DeleteI am including a paragraph from Applied Statistics for Engineers and Physical Scientists, Edition 2 by Robert V. Hogg and Johannes Ledolter copyrighted in 1987 from chapter 1.6 The Importance of Experimentation on page 57.
Delete“In good experimental designs relatively few runs are needed to get precise estimates of the effects on the response of the factors studied. R. A. Fisher, an eminent statistician and scientist who developed this subject, said that a complete overhaul of an experimental design may often increase the precision of the results 10- to 12- fold for the same cost in time and labor.”
I do not know how the above relates to monitoring(1) or measuring changes in ‘ecological integrity.’ I can say that intelligently designed experiments are important for determining effectiveness of herbicide applications and measuring off-target damage.
I will not know the results from an herbicide application until the following growing season. While trying to minimize herbicide use, often an application fails, and I have wasted an entire day’s, or even season’s, work. Every time there is a new technique, I must start the process over of finding the minimum concentration necessary for effective control. When I find the minimum concentration and techniques that works best my findings are then not trialed by other stewards. Intelligence in experimental design (or designing a monitoring program) is critical for efficient use of resources and finding results that are relevant.
1 See the species accumulation curve in the following link for a use of statistics for determining the number of plots that must be surveyed to adequately assess the species present at a site.
https://www.middlerockconservationpartners.org/uploads/5/8/4/7/58476113/hill_tract_veg_baseline_survey_summary.pdf
Dan, is it possible to post an outline of your evaluation method or a list of the specific factors you consider?
DeleteThese are published by community type. I've been involved with oak woodlands and oak openings in WI. Ryan O'Connor with WDNR Natural Heritage Conservation has a presentation on YouTube for Wisconsin oak barrens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvZjlINkpdc&t=4s
DeleteOak woodland and opening assessments aren't yet online, but they will be soon. The current version of the oak barrens coarse metrics assessment protocol and associated field worksheet are here under "additional resources" at the right of the page: https://apps.dnr.wi.gov/biodiversity/Home/detail/communities/9168
Keeping track of an herbicide treatment is not the same as community or ecosystem monitoring. To do the former requires keeping good records of approaches, and trying alternatives side by side when there is uncertainty about methods. I'm talking about monitoring of how the natural community / ecosystem itself is doing, and a particular treatment may or may not have much effect on that, regardless of whether the treatment is effective. A lot of treatments are effective, but ultimately to no end because they either do not address underlying and/or aren't part of an integrated plan with appropriate sequence...that is probably the norm where interventions are viewed as temporary and/or there is not close oversight by someone that has good working knowledge of the the appropriate ecology and natural history. Only when you can identify the important elements of composition and structure as they relate to ecological process, can you identify what to monitor...and then do the monitoring.
DeleteFantastic references that hit the mark-thank you. It reminds me of the difference between scientists & engineers. The former searches for truth while the latter approximates the truth to obtain a solution that is good enough. Both are necessary but with few resources, “good enough” is the right answer. I know this isn’t easy, but hopefully we can somehow standardize on a protocol for each major community type & implement it throughout the midwest. Another need is a guide to the typically encountered native & non native plant species that identifies one or two characteristics that leads to a probable ID. For example, the only thing you need to know for identifying common buckthorn is the tiny thorn in the crotch of the “V” formed by terminal twigs.
DeleteI don’t think the evaluation should lump invasive species together as they have varying degrees of impact & control difficulty. Crown vetch is a bigger long term problem compared to wild parsnip.
Maybe. In the oak barrens assessment they used WI NR40 species, which are those deemed to be the worst (very imperfectly), not just exotics. Crown vetch is an NR40 regulated species (parsnip is to), but oxe-eye daisy and many, many exotic aren't (first general composition metric). The second general composition metric has to do with ratio of native vs. all exotic. In the oak woodland metrics we do combine all exotics in a metric. We could have tried to say Asian bittersweet is worse than buckthorn or bush honeysuckle...or maybe hemp nettle is worse than garlic mustard, but that soon becomes intractable and can be very situation-dependent. There is also a lot of correlation between the presence of a lot of exotics and one-another, and that association is often related to the collapse of core ecological processes.
DeleteThose are persuasive points. I was thinking of 2 invasive plant categories: 1) those that displace natives in high quality communities of most types & are hard to control 2) all other invasives. For the prairies I work on, crown vetch & perhaps white sweet clover (not on NR40) & birdsfoot trefoil (not on NR40) fall into the 1st category. It can take 6-10 years to get a handle on these depending on resources, even if a site is regularly burned. But I think it’s unrealistic to expect a site evaluation like this one to consider current & future resources. So I can see this protocol doing a good job assessing ecological integrity, but I wonder if it also can accurately assess restoration potential.
DeleteI have seen some amazing recovery in ecosystems when well-conceived herbicide applications kill invasive plants without killing native species. I have also seen herbicide applications (especially spraying) that have killed native species making an invasive species problem worse.
DeleteThe way I see it, the problem in drier habitat is not with changed ecological processes. The forest preserves burn. The problem is a lack of manpower to do selective invasive species control.
Right now, the stewards are cutting larger invasive species and thinning 'pole' trees pushing the front back. However, November should be reserved for areas where larger invasive species have already been cleared and there are now dense thickets of sprouting stumps and seedlings that have grown needing treating.
When people keep targeting the larger invasive species and ignoring the dense thickets that then develop, the restoration areas become worse than they were before.
Stewards know the following, but I will repeat it for other people reading. November is the best time to treat small woody invasive species because most of them still have leaves and are easy to find. The native plants are dormant, or have smaller winter leaves, and are less likely to be damaged from herbicide vapors. Herbicide also tends to be most effective in late summer and fall as plants are transporting food to the roots for storage.
We have lots of people who want to cut down big buckthorn or trees. What we need is just as many people to work on controlling all the small woody invasive species in areas where larger woody invasive species have already been cleared.
The entire preserve is smaller than my current yard, which I manage to keep mowed and weeds dealt with and wayward woodies etc. How hard can this be? When I started my career there were sadly too many scattered remnants in their last legs like this…. Emergency situations where a burn was urgently needed before the grass to carry fire was lost for good, and areas where the grass was so far gone buckthorn over your head made the black earth crack from dryness in the spring. How long have the plants been “gone?” And what is the hydric integrity of the area? I have seen larger areas, denser areas, come back from this. It’s not impossible. Morton Grove should feel very ashamed.
ReplyDeleteWe are fortunate in the Chicago Region to a ready-made system of monitoring that is currently accepted use in regulatory compliance and also qualitative rapid assessment monitoring for other uses, such as annual "inspections" (I like to call them surveys) - the platform is Floristic Quality Assessment methodology and the computer programs facilitating easy-to-use data entry methods are Universal FQA Calculator online and the US Army Corps of Engineers website for Chicago Region FQA Calculator. Many other regions do not have this resource available yet or using these study results in a comparable manner - I encourage everyone to learn their plants and contribute to FQA datasets. Cheers
ReplyDeleteWithin the field of Engineering there is a maxim: “Without data, you’re just another opinion.” Botanical data are needed for a tool or combination of tools in order to distinguish among “good,” “better,” and “best” results for ecological restoration projects. Just what those tools are, I do not know. Without the results of those tools’ analyses, however, when considering progress being made at different sites, I am faced with the same conundrum that Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart faced in 1964 when considering the answer to a question in a case. He said that he couldn’t define it but “I know it when I see it.”
DeleteSome combination of tools (multivariate analysis in the parlance of mathematicians) that accounts for each species, the good as well as the bad, and their numbers is needed to quantify progress in restoration work. The data must come from monitoring, surveys, or censuses every so often: 5 years, ten years, (?) years. Really observable changes take years to be apparent. Last year in the Poplar Creek Prairie Stewards’ newsletter “The Prairie Pulse,” there were two photos taken about 30 years apart. Vast “improvement” was apparent. I couldn’t define it, but I knew it when I saw it.
Quantifiable results are needed not only to bolster both financial as well as public support for ecological restoration projects, but also to sustain scientific objectivity.