Rangeland Ecology & Management

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INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR NATIVE GRASSLAND RESTORATION IN MEDITERRANEAN CALIFORNIA
Author
Shaw, Julea A.
Gornish, Elise
Eastburn, Danny J.
Laca, Emilio
Macon, Daniel K.
Tate, Kenneth W.
Roche, Leslie
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2018
Body

California is characterized by a Mediterranean climate, with moderately wet winters and dry summers, that creates unique challenges for vegetation management. In particular, exotic annual plants from Mediterranean regions of Europe are adept at quickly taking advantage of rain, making them strong competitors against native perennial bunchgrasses. Exotic annual grasses now dominate most California grasslands, fundamentally altering the ecosystem and reducing forage quality. �Restoration and vegetation management are important for reestablishing the economic and ecological value of rangelands. However, restoration efforts often have low success due to high cost and persistence of highly competitive invasive plants. To address these challenges, we are testing an integrated management approach incorporating low-cost spatially-patterned seeding with targeted grazing and burning. Spatially-patterned seeding of desired plant species (i.e. �strip seeding�) has been suggested to reduce revegetation costs up to 66%. However, little research has been done on the effectiveness of strip seeding.� In Fall 2012, we seeded fields with native perennial bunchgrasses in different strip widths (seeding coverage from 0%-100%). In the springs of 2016 and 2017 we measured community diversity and abundance across transects in the middle and edges of seeded and unseeded strips. We used PERMANOVA to understand how strip size affected community dynamics across the seeded strips. We found that native species successfully established in all seeded strips and conferred some degree of invasion resistance, but that unseeded strips were dominated by invasive species regardless of strip size. Therefore, to reduce invasive cover and encourage dispersal of native species from seeded to unseeded strips, we implemented grazing and burning treatments in Spring 2017. We will measure post-treatment community composition and reproductive output of a common invasive grass, Elymus caput-medusae (medusahead), to determine if combining strip seeding, grazing, and burning is an effective strategy to establish native grasses and reduce invasive cover.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Conference Name
SRM Reno, NV