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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
Integrated Pest Management Competitive Grants Program |
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Project Title:
Testing community functional composition of vegetation buffers to improve postfire invasion resistance of Coastal Sage Scrub. |
Project Directors (PDs):
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Lead State: CA Lead Organization: University of California, Riverside |
| Undesignated Funding: $29,822 |
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Start Date: Mar-01-2018 End Date: Mar-01-2019 |
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Pests Involved: Bromus diandrus and other mediterranean annual grasses |
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Site/Commodity: Coal Canyon @ Chino Hills State Park |
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Area of Emphasis: Post-fire revegetation as component of IPM |
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Summary:
Disturbances to ecosystems often provide opportunities for invasive species to establish and spread. The Canyon fires (1&2) of 2017 burned over 11,800 acres in Chino Hills State Park, including threatened Coastal Sage Scrub (CSS) habitat that is home to numerous endemic species. Mediterranean annual grasses are present and spreading in patches nearby, and due to their prolific forage production their presence on the landscape threatens to further accelerate and intensify wildfires in the future and competitively exclude native vegetation. Reestablishing native vegetation may provide invasion resistance and prevent type conversion of CSS to annual grassland. We propose to study how functional composition of species mixes used for seeding in bulldozer lines may constrain invasion, allowing interior portions of CSS habitat to regenerate sufficiently to reestablish natural invasion resistance. A greenhouse experiment will characterize traits of twenty native and five invasive species across multiple individuals and life stages. Traits include specific leaf area, specific root area, relative growth rate, seed mass, and phenology. We will create two distinct seed mixes, one with low functional diversity and traits as similar as possible to invaders, and the other with maximum functional diversity. We will measure relative abundance of plant species in bulldozer lines and colonizing nearby. We hypothesize that the low-dispersion community will more effectively suppress invasive species in the first year due to similar resource needs and reproductive strategies, but that the high-dispersion community will be more effective in the second year due to increased two-year survival of native species.
Objectives: 1. Characterize the pattern of propagule pressure in, and invasion risk from, bulldozer lines. 2. Characterize the functional trait composition of likely invaders and native plants available for revegetation. 3. Assess the relative effectiveness of a native revegetation seed mix that matches the traits of invaders (i.e. low functional evenness) vs. one that represents the diversity of the local species pool (i.e. high functional evenness) in reducing invasive plant abundance and facilitating native plant survival over two years. |
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