The demand for restoration of degraded lands to diverse native habitat is growing, requiring efficient strategies for large-scale seeding and planting of native species. Restoration is often limited by low germination and establishment rates of native plants, so identifying the most effective seeding methods and rates may speed the restoration process. We tested three different methods of seeding (broadcasting, drilling, simulated hydroseeding) and five seeding rates (ranging from 0 to 1400 seeds/m²) to determine their efficacy in establishing three common species of Pacific Northwest prairies: Festuca roemeri, Eriophyllum lanatum, and Potentilla gracilis. We sowed seeds into six arrays at three western Washington sites on two dates (January and October) and monitored plant abundance for three years. We found that broadcast and simulated hydroseeding did not produce significantly different outcomes, suggesting that the extra resources required for hydromulching are not necessary. Additionally, broadcast seeding resulted in more consistent and reliable native plant establishment than seed drilling. Increasing seeding rates increased abundance, as expected, but species remained seed limited even at the highest seeding rates. Establishment varied considerably by site and seeding date. First-year establishment was positively correlated to third-year abundance, but this also varied greatly by site and species. Due to temporal and spatial variability in establishment, managers should evaluate treatments on individual sites and monitor results for several years after sowing.

Sandplain grassland and coastal heathland are globally rare communities threatened by succession, development, and shoreline change. Restricted mainly to coastal plains of the Northeast, they provide vital habitat for many state and regionally rare species, highlighting their importance for conservation and restoration. Brush-cutting and prescribed fire have been successful in maintaining these communities but have proven ineffective in converting overgrown shrubland to an earlier successional state. Previous research has established that the soil seed bank in overgrown shrubland lacks key dominant grassland species, and that while small-scale soil disturbance leads to short-term increases in grasses and forbs, woody species rapidly resume dominance. We examined whether applying larger-scale soil disturbance in an area previously treated with annual brush-cutting could more effectively impede woody regrowth while providing an extensive mineral soil seed bed to recruit desired vegetation. We evaluated the effectiveness of harrowing, harrowing plus seeding, and seeding alone, compared to untreated plots and to existing sandplain grassland and coastal heathland reference sites. Harrowing stimulated seed bank germination of varied native disturbance-associated species, including four Massachusetts state-listed rare species that recruited only within the harrowed area, and indicated that the seed bank lacked key grassland dominants. Comparison to reference grassland and heathland sites suggested that harrowing plus seeding more closely approached the desired restoration outcome than any other treatment. Our results suggest that larger-scale soil disturbance can enhance biodiversity by stimulating germination of native early successional plants from the seed bank while providing germination sites for sown target species.

Creation and use of multi-use trails are increasing throughout grasslands of North America. While the direct and indirect ecological impacts of multi-use trails are generally understood, their specific impacts on adjacent grassland conservation require further assessment. Traditional scientific methods of quantifying trail impacts are often prohibitively costly in terms of required time, expertise, and equipment. Here, we evaluate the utility of a rapid assessment methodology—combining rangeland health protocols for grasslands with publicly available Google Earth mapping technologies—for capturing trail impacts as a function of distance from trail in a multi-use natural area in southwestern Alberta, Canada. Our methodology successfully detected a positive relationship between rangeland health scores and increasing distance from trail, indicating its viability as a rapid assessment tool. Second, this methodology was sensitive enough to allow the development of a more generalized statistical model demonstrating that rangeland health was best explained by a combination of slope, aspect, plant community type, and distance from trail. Combined, we suggest the limited costs of this method, combined with its ability to detect indirect impacts of trails on the health of adjacent grasslands, indicate this tool has potential utility for land managers where resources are limited. More specifically, we suggest this grassland health protocol can be highly effective as a first “rapid assessment,” prior to investing in more traditional ecological methodologies.

Restoration of the herbaceous understory community of the longleaf pine ecosystem is limited by the availability of appropriate seeds. To understand the relationship of seed transfer zones and genetic composition of two co-occurring species of the herbaceous understory, seeds of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and hairy lespedeza (Lespedeza hirta) were collected from five provisional seed transfer zones across the historical range of the longleaf pine ecosystem in the North American Coastal Plain as well as a commercially available seed source originating from outside this range. To determine the genetic structure and diversity of these plants within the seed transfer zones and the commercial source, microsatellite and inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers were used for little bluestem and hairy lespedeza, respectively. For both species, plants from within the five seed transfer zones were genetically distinct from the commercial source from Kentucky. Little bluestem and hairy lespedeza plants from two provisional seed transfer zones were more genetically similar to each other than they were to other seed zones, which could justify merging these two zones. The genetic relationships among the remaining seed zones, including the commercial source from Kentucky, roughly follow geographic proximity, with genetic similarity decreasing as a function of geographic distance. Most of the genetic variation was partitioned within and less among seed zones, despite documenting significant differences among seed zones. The results of this study support the sub–The Nature Conservancy ecoregion seed transfer zones while acknowledging species-specific differences among seed transfer zones for the longleaf pine ecosystem.

As concern about declining pollinator populations mounts, it is important to understand the range of insect taxa that provide pollination services. We use pollen transport information acquired over three years in two habitats at Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA, to compare probabilities of pollen transport among insect taxa and between sexes of bees. Sampling was conducted on 1-ha plots, eight in sparse vegetation (May–October samples; N = 74 surveys) and 12 in wheatgrass prairie vegetation (June–July samples; N = 87 surveys). Insects contacting reproductive parts of flowers were netted, placed individually into tubes charged with ethyl acetate, then transferred to individual labeled glassine envelopes for transport to the lab. Pollen was removed from insect bodies with fuchsin jelly cubes which were then mounted on microscope slides for identification. The probability of taxa transporting only conspecific pollen (with respect to the plant species upon which it was collected), mixed pollen, only non-conspecific, or no pollen was estimated with multinomial logistic regression. Bees were the most commonly captured flower visitor and carried by far the most pollen (females >10× as much as males), but they were most likely to carry mixed pollen loads. Flies, beetles, and wasps were also common flower visitors and beetles were most likely to carry only conspecific pollen. Ants and diurnal lepidopterans were unlikely to carry any pollen. Bees, beetles, flies, and wasps varied in the timing and habitat in which they were most likely to transport pollen, suggesting that all played a role in providing robust pollination services.

Contemporary losses of early-successional young forest and shrubland habitat have resulted in range-wide population declines of numerous wildlife species, establishing shrubland conservation as a high priority in the eastern United States. However, the extent and spatial distribution of shrubland habitat is lacking for many locations. The Landsat program is an important resource for quantifying vegetation and land cover, but recent applications indicate that divergent structural characteristics between certain feature classes, such as vegetation height, are not readily captured by spectral response alone. The fusion of Landsat imagery with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data at the pixel level into existing supervised classification schemes may offset this discrepancy. We used multispectral images from Landsat 8′s Operational Land Imager (OLI) to compare Landsat OLI and Landsat OLI-LiDAR fusion data in the classification of 10 vegetation and land cover types across a ∼5000 km² area in southeastern Ohio at the native 30-m Landsat resolution. Fusion data produced a 12% increase in overall classification accuracy from the Landsat OLI model and met minimum mapping accuracy standards in remote sensing. Importantly, LiDAR textural bands in the fusion model improved discrimination of forest and shrubland classes with the most dramatic difference manifesting as a 75% increase in shrubland user's accuracy. We demonstrate that Landsat OLI–LiDAR fusions are valuable for accurate shrubland mapping in forestlands. Additionally, we show that vegetation and land cover modeling can be easily integrated into existing wildlife monitoring programs by simultaneously sampling vegetation classes and wildlife communities from similar locations.

Green spaces for conservation within urban areas are limited. Many municipalities have storm-water facilities that may be used for conservation purposes. The Village of Bradley, Illinois, USA, requires new storm-water facilities be planted with native vegetation. We assessed the quality of several of these facilities using diversity metrics. Sites planted with diverse seed mixes had diversity at a level similar to larger, high-quality restorations in the region. Using a landscape approach to maximizing biodiversity can increase municipal-wide diversity beyond that found at individual sites.

The trees in a young plant community on abandoned agricultural land in Berrien County, Michigan, were tallied by size classes and found to be dominated by red maple (Acer rubrum) and black gum (Nyssa sylvatica). Soils were acidic and sandy. The community fits the Natural Resources Conservation Service Ecological Site Description of an acidic sandy flatwoods. Based on size class distributions, this community may be transitional to a beech-maple forest.