Pipeline construction projects create landscape scale disturbances by stripping away the vegetation and disturbing soils, which can lead to poor native vegetation recovery and opportunities for invasive plant dominance. As part of a designed experiment, we are studying the effects of the reclamation efforts and land management decisions on a 60 mile natural gas pipeline right-of-way in Southern Arizona, which was constructed in summer of 2014. The study quantifies the treatments of drill seeding, grazing exclusion, and trampling exclusion (foot and vehicle trampling) on plant establishment in comparison to undisturbed adjacent land. We use plant species composition and plant density metrics to evaluate the effects of each treatment. This poster presents the progress of plant establishment on the right-of-way approximately one year following reclamation efforts and at the close of the 2015 monsoon season. Our initial results indicate that, while vegetation biomass and density is similar regardless of seed treatment, less desirable community of species has established without seeds. Additionally, trampling by vehicles, humans, and cattle has an impact on vegetation establishment characteristics. We can draw applicable conclusions from this data about the ability of native plants to propagate from the soil seed bank or adjacent sites, the effectiveness of seeding for controlling invasive plants, and the effects of grazing and trampling on plant establishment.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.