Species We Study: Native Plants

ʻŌhiʻa ( Metrosideros polymorpha ) is the dominant tree in Hawaiian forests, but Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death (ROD), a newly emerging disease that stands to cause high mortality of this ecologically important tree, may lead to invasions by exotic plants as gaps open in the forest. To better understand if planting of ʻōhiʻa seedlings can be used as a restoration tool, we investigated the survival of ʻōhiʻa...

Bison have played a key role in shaping the grasslands of the Great Plains for millennia. National Parks are a major last bastion for wild herds of the national mammal and symbol of the Department of the Interior. However, even as the National Park Service aims to maintain as natural as possible ecosystem conditions within its parks’ boundaries, managers regularly make decisions affecting their...

Southern Arizona’s semi-desert grasslands provides habitat for flora and fauna, regulates rainfall infiltration and overland flow, mitigates surface erosion and dust production, and sequesters carbon. Sustainable management is important to maintain these ecological services and is of concern for the managers, ranchers, and other people associated with the grassland. The Buenos Aires National...

More than 100,000 ha of native tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the northern Great Plains. Although prairies in this region evolved with grazing, fire, and climatic variability, management of FWS grasslands often has been passive and involved extended periods of rest. In 2008, the USGS and the FWS initiated a collaborative effort, the...

With scarcely 2% of native tallgrass prairie remaining today, it is imperative that we wisely manage what little remains to conserve prairie-dependent plants, pollinators, other animals and ecosystem processes. Two commonly used methods of prairie management are prescribed fire and conservation grazing. Either method may present trade-offs with respect to conservation of vulnerable plant, bee or...

Badlands National Park contains the largest contiguous bison range in the core of the species’ historic range on the northern Great Plains. The park nevertheless is too small to accommodate natural movements of free-ranging bison. As a result, continual grazing by resident bison has supplanted intense-but-ephemeral grazing by nomadic bison. The herd also is currently too small to prevent gradual...

Agriculture is the dominant land use on privately owned lands in the northern Great Plains of the United States. Management decisions on agricultural lands are influenced by a variety of policies and programs established by the federal government in periodic Farm Bills. In 1985, Congress passed the Food Security Act. Title XII of the Act established the Conservation Reserve Program or CRP, a...

Recent studies show that past and ongoing environmental changes have been substantial and have likely already affected conservation efforts in Hawai‘i. Much of the state has experienced substantial drying, including decreases in mean annual precipitation since the 1920s, longer rainless periods, and decreasing stream flow. Temperatures have been increasing in Hawai‘i for the last 40 years...

Environmentally responsible land management has direct and indirect implications for wildlife, water quality, and air quality in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems far beyond their extent. Agricultural land use accounts for over 50 percent of the surface area of the contiguous United States. Public recognition that social, aesthetic, and recreational values enhance the traditional uses of...

Initial studies suggest terrestrial Hawaiian plant species may be vulnerable to climate change. However, these models lack information on species-specific traits that affect ecological and evolutionary responses of species to climate change. Research is needed to refine current vulnerability models and apply these to Pacific Islands outside Hawai‘i.

Montane plant communities in widely separated intact natural environments of the world have responded to changes in precipitation and temperature regimes by shifting both margins and core distributional ranges upward in elevation. Reduced evapotranspiration rates in cooler climate zones at higher elevation may compensate for less precipitation and higher temperatures within species’ former ranges...

Weather and climate impacts on dominant native perennials must be understood in order to efficiently manage our western landscapes. We use an ecophysiological approach, linking to population, community, and landscape ecology, to understand the impacts and responses of plants on or to their environment.

Rangelands are natural ecosystems where the native vegetation consists predominantly of grasses, grass-like plants, forbs, or shrubs. Rangelands include natural grasslands, savannas, shrublands, oak and pinyon-juniper woodlands, many deserts, tundra, alpine communities, marshes, and wet meadows.

Special status species and habitats are often sentinels of accelerated ecosystem change and, by definition, are priorities for protection, restoration, or focused management.

Desert landscapes are rapidly changing due to increases in invasive plant species, frequency of wildfires, urban and energy development, recreational use, military training, and climate variation. Dr. Todd Esque, USGS researchers, and collaborators are working together to investigate these changes and provide managers with key information that can be used to manage natural resources more...

There is a growing consensus among resource managers to use native plant materials for ecological restoration of degraded drylands. Some plant species may be suitable for re-introduction across broad environmental gradients. Other species may fail under narrower conditions, or their re-introduction may have genetic consequences for local ecotypes, particularly when adapting to future climate...

The Channel Islands were used as ranches for almost 150 years. Sheep, cattle, pigs and other livestock grazed on native perennial scrub, leaving behind barren landscapes that could not collect moisture from coastal fog. In time, ranching ended and livestock were removed. WERC’s Dr. Kathryn McEachern is monitoring habitat recovery and testing the efficacy of restoration practices on the islands for...

Mesic forests of Hawai‘i island provide an ideal system for the study of forest restoration because they have a similar history to other tropical and subtropical forests globally, while maintaining a relatively simple species assemblage. Many of these forests were cleared for grazing, and then later abandoned, to become dominated by pasture grasses that form competitive layers such that native...

Low-elevation Pacific islands are vulnerable to inundation from sea-level rise and sudden flooding events. The largely low-lying islands of Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), that extend 1,930 km beyond the main Hawaiian Islands, are a World Heritage Site and part of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The NWHI support the largest tropical seabird rookery in the world, provide...

Dryland regions have been degraded by invasive species, wildfire, overgrazing, agricultural conversion, energy development, recreational activity, and urban growth. These disturbances and others are accelerated by one of the fastest growing human populations in the country and a pressing background of decreasing water availability due to drought and elevated temperatures that are projected to...

In the southwest US, monsoon precipitation increases sharply along a northwest to southeast gradient. Pleuraphis jamesii or galleta grass, is an important C4 grass species that spans across this large range in precipitation pattern. In this study we are assessing the ability of galleta grass to adapt to changes in the seasonality of rainfall (termed “plasticity”). In the fall of 2014, we...