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Are We There Yet: Assessing Trajectories of Two Restored Prairies to Target Native Prairies over a Decadal Time Frame
Weickert, Nathaniel Christopher
Weickert, Nathaniel Christopher
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Abstract
Tallgrass prairie restoration aims to increase biodiversity, reinstate natural ecosystem functioning, and increase wildlife habitat in lands that have been degraded by human activity. Ecological restoration often involves identifying intact target communities that can be used as a reference for what a successfully restored community looks and functions like. The purpose of this study was to use the International Society for Ecological Restoration standards for ecosystem restoration to assess the compositional and functional similarities and differences between two restorations established under contrasting climate conditions to two nearby native prairie targets. I leveraged a sequential restoration experiment initiated in 2010 at the Konza Prairie Biological Station to compare trajectories of plant community development and ecosystem functioning in restorations established under different planting-year climate conditions in relation to nearby native prairie targets. Plant species composition, functional group cover based on plant life history traits, and aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) were measured at the same scales in the restored and native prairies. Indicator species analysis was performed to identify species-level dissimilarities between the composition of the plant communities. The restoration sequences, while distinct from one another due to the effects of planting-year precipitation, were more similar to one another than they were to either target in terms of species and functional group composition. Functionally, the restorations differed from one another in their response to precipitation, with the prairie established in a drought year being less sensitive to interannual variability in precipitation than the prairie established in an average rainfall year. The two targets were quite dissimilar from one another. The reference target closest to the restorations and on the most similar soil was more like the restorations than the other native prairie target in terms of species composition, functional composition, diversity, and evenness. Species diversity and evenness was higher in this closest target, while species richness was highest in the further target. Both reference systems had higher species richness than the restorations, with the prairie established in the average rainfall year having a significantly lower total species richness. Indicator species for the restorations were all species planted during restoration, whereas the native prairie communities had a larger number of unique species not present in the restorations. In conclusion, even with a small sown species pool, the development of restored prairie approached native prairies on a decadal time scale to contain higher diversity than functionally similar native prairie, but targets can be dissimilar from one another even in the same region and under the same management regime. Knowledge of plant composition in targets, compared to restored prairies, can inform management decisions by revealing satellite species that could be overseeded to steer restoration trajectories closer to native communities.
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2023-05-31
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University of Kansas
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989343_1.pdf
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Ecology, Natural resource management, Aboveground Biomass, Functional Groups, Plant Community, Prairie, Reference Ecosystem, Restoration