Evidence-based Restoration Lab

Prairie grasslands are one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet.  There are many ongoing restoration efforts in the Midwest Region.  One of the most extensive and successful restoration projects is at Nachusa Grasslands.  The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has been restoring prairie ecosystems from farmland since the 1980's and they have different blocks of prairie that are in different stages and ages of recovery.  Moreover, they reintroduced bison at Nachusa in 2014.  Restoring bison is hypothesized to restore the key ecological functions and relationships that existed in tallgrass prairies historically and also provides a unique opportunity to study ecosystem response to the restoration of this important driver.  Together with TNC, and faculty and students at NIU (Nick Barber, Rich King, and Wes Swingley), and Rutgers University (Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar), I set up long-term monitoring in plots in a Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) experimental design with different time since restoration and bison treatments to track responses to prairie and bison restoration of plants, microbes, arthropods, small mammals, reptiles, and pollinators.  This extensive monitoring can answer different questions about how different restoration efforts (e.g. seeding density, prescribed fire, bison restoration) affect restoration trajectories and outcomes. This collaboration with Nick Barber was funded through the NSF-EAGER program and we have continuing NSF funding in which we've created a biodiversity ecosystem functioning experiment (see CAPER below).

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Ongoing Projects Include:

1. Community Assembly in Grassland Ecosystems (CAPER)

2. Grassland bird response to bison and prairie vegetation restoration

3. Small mammal landscape ecology

4. Beaver impacts in Nachusa Streams

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Watch a video about our remote sensing work here:

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