Free State Prairie
Lawrence Free State High School
Are two strategies better than one? Manipulation of seed density and soil community in an experimental prairie restoration.
Restoration Ecology 27:1021-2031.
The abstract is shown below, along with comments by one of the authors, Terra Lubin. In 2014, Peggy Schultz (Environmental Studies Program and Kansas Biological Survey, University of Kansas) initiated this “experiment within an experiment” by transplanting prairie seedlings to a subset of the permanent 1 m x 1 m vegetation plots. The prairie seedlings either did or did not have “live” remnant prairie soil associated with their roots. She was curious whether the microbes in the live prairie soil would affect how the restoration progressed. Terra Lubin analyzed data on vegetation from the permanent plots in 2017 and found that those with the prairie soil had greater restoration success. This work was part of Terra’s Ph.D. dissertation in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. James Bever and Helen Alexander (both from University of Kansas) also assisted with data analysis and writing.
Abstract. Restoration practitioners have a variety of practices to choose from when designing a restoration, and different strategies may address different goals. Knowledge of how to best use multiple strategies could improve restoration outcomes. Here, we examine two commonly suggested strategies in a single tallgrass prairie restoration experiment: increased forb sowing density and prairie soil inoculation. We designed a study with two different forb seeding densities. Within these densities, we transplanted seedlings into 1‐m2 plots that had been grown in either a whole prairie soil inoculum or sterilized prairie soil. After 4 years, we found positive effects of both high forb sowing density and inoculation treatments on the ratio of seeded to nonseeded plant cover in these plots, and negative effects of both treatments on nonseeded plant diversity. No effects of either treatment were seen on seeded plant diversity. Each strategy also affected the plant community in different ways: high forb sowing density increased seeded forb richness and decreased native nonseeded plant cover, while inoculation decreased non‐native cover, and tended to increase average successional stage of the community. These effects on restoration outcome were typically independent of each other, with the result that plots with both manipulations had the most positive effects on restoration outcomes. We thus advocate the combined use of these restoration strategies, and further studies which focus on both seeding and soil community manipulation in restoration.
Researcher Highlight: Terra Lubin
While I grew up here in Kansas, and always loved the landscape, I didn’t know anything about prairies until I became interested in ecology. In a senior ecology seminar we were all discussing how great it would be to create a community restoration project and started throwing out ideas. Our instructor, Helen Alexander was the one who knew that talking doesn’t make thing happen! She (with a lot of hard work, networking, and perseverance) made the project a reality, and we all pitched in as we could.
I was so impressed with the high school kids who wanted to be involved, and the teachers who have utilized the project in so many ways. It is truly an inter-institutional, inter-disciplinary project, which makes it a rare gem! I was very lucky to get to be involved in a little weeding, seeding, and touring early on, and later, to be allowed to help collect and analyze some of the data from the project. While I am currently working on other projects involving plants and soil on a broader scale, the work with the Free State restoration inspired me and I hope to pursue further research around restoration best practices.