April 21, Clean up soils, seed banks 2. Example budgets and practical constraints 3. Evaluating restoration success ***Meet directly at White Hall aud. on Wed. for 4:00 seminar!

Soil Restoration Accessing the NRCS web soil survey: Online soil surveys:

Briefly, some soil terms: Parent material Texture

Particle size (textural) distribution classifications

Available Water Capacity

rage_pasture/management_guides/F orage_Guide8_Figure2.jpg pH effects on nutrients

Soil Organic Matter ontent.gif

Some thoughts: Problems can arise when, Nutrients are too high, or too low Soil pH is too high, or too low Soil texture is too sandy…or too clayey Moisture is too much….or too little Organic matter is too much…or too little

Camp site soil restoration in Oregon Tropical Agroforestry

Soil Seed Banks: Ecology and Management Soil seed bank: viable seeds stored in O horizons and mineral soils Process of seed deposition in SB can be considered as a seed budget

Types of Seed Banks Transient: persist < 1 yr Persistent: persist > 1 yr Which species form large, persistent SB? Disturbance spp Annuals/biennials Small-seeded spp

Often there is not a close correspondence of seed bank composition with aboveground composition; however, we need to be careful about looking at what is there versus what is not

Means without shared letters differ at P < 0.05 (Tukey’s Test) Error bars are 1 SD Effects of fire-related cues on Penstemon barbatus seeds

Assessing Seed Banks Identify objectives Choose sampling design Collect samples of known volume Choose emergence or extraction methods Express seed densities as seeds/m 2

Practical Constraints and Restoration Effectiveness The “bottom line” Effects on the land, effects on human consciousness How can we do landscape-scale ER on a site budget? What do we need to do to make ER effective in a changing climate?

Assessing Restoration Success Objectives of restoration vary widely Accordingly, monitoring to evaluate success will differ among ecosystems/projects

Assessing Restoration Success Root of monitoring means “to warn” – essential purpose of monitoring is to raise a warning flag Monitoring: collection and analysis of repeated measurements to evaluate changes in conditions or progress toward objective (Elzinga et al. 1998)

Assessing Restoration Success Monitoring should be driven by objectives – restoration/mgt objectives and objectives for what we want the monitoring to tell us ER/mgt designed to meet an objective (desired condition). Monitoring designed to determine if that objective is met

Assessing Restoration Success Elzinga divides monitoring in to resource and habitat monitoring Why? Block divides monitoring in to implementation and effectiveness monitoring

Assessing Restoration Success Monitoring may also be used to determine if ER is needed in the first place Monitoring versus research and the utility of monitoring schemes

No. sampled No. extrapolate to Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Population

Assessing Restoration Success Increasing inference from monitoring: Pre-tmt data, replication, random selection of measurement sites, replicating across the landscape, inclusion of controls

Assessing Restoration Success Monitoring may be able to detect a problem, but not the cause If suspect causes, design a research project that manipulates the causes; then, design a research project that assesses outcomes of ER/mgt that remediates the causes

Assessing Restoration Success A monitoring protocol for evaluating the effectiveness of tidal marsh restoration Restoration Ecology 2002