Download or read book Increasing Urban Biodiversity in Springfield MA by Restoring the Native Floodplain Plant Community Along the Connecticut River written by Keith Hannon and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this project was to increase urban biodiversity by restoring the native floodplain plant communities along the Connecticut River at the Pioneer Valley Riverfront Club (PVRC). Restoring or designing native plant communities is an important design alternative to the typical design methods of using non-native plant species and mono-culture plant palettes. Restoring a native plant community at the PVRC will allow the landscape to function once more as usable habitat for wildlife and native plants, encourage the natural succession of native plants, and become a more resilient landscape that can better withstand ecological changes caused by various factors including climate change. The project was also intended to be a showcase example for other landscape designers to see how native plant community design can be effectively utilized to not only inform the plant palette for a landscape design proposal, but also effectively show how a native plant community-based design can restore the functionality and environmental resilience of a landscape in a safe, educational, and welcoming manner. In addition, this project bridges the gap and acknowledges the difference between a typical landscape designer's approach to restoration and a restoration ecologist's approach. This was accomplished by re-grading the site of the PVRC in order to reconnect the artificially filled-in and elevated areas of the property with the floodplain. The design creates a series of terraces based on estimated flood levels required to sustain both the Floodplain Forest and High Terrace Floodplain Forest plant communities while utilizing the plants found in those native plant communities, as described by the Classification of the Natural Communities of Massachusetts (Swain & Kearsley, 2001). The designs were informed by extensive research on native plant communities in Massachusetts, previous native plant community restoration projects, and through detailed site analysis and site visits to the researched case studies.
Download or read book The Influence of Restored Flooding on Floodplain Plant Distributions written by Wendy Bryan Trowbridge and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Effects of Flooding on Connecticut River Plant Species written by Hanna Atia and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Due to dam construction and other human influences, patterns of river water flow, including the timing and duration of flooding, have become increasingly stable in wetlands. Flooding is a natural disturbance event that changes the physical structure and nutrient availability of habitats. The prevention of natural flooding can change species composition in floodplains and assist colonization by non-native species. The presumed mechanism for this pattern is that species differ in their tolerance to flood duration, yet there are few experimental studies that have examined flood tolerances experimentally. The purpose of this study was to quantify differences in flood tolerance among 25 woody plant species found along the Connecticut River, and to determine the degree to which flood tolerance predicts species distributions along flooding gradients. I additionally analyzed the roles of height, non-native status, growth form, and evolutionary history on flood tolerance. Seedlings were subjected to flood treatments of four different durations, with and without suspended clay sediment. The flood tolerance of each species was calculated by comparing individual species' survival relative to the average survival across all replicates. The flood and sediment treatments had a significant effect on seedling survival, and the distribution of species on flooding gradients was predicted by the experimentally determined flood tolerance. There was significant variation in height between species, and seedlings submerged more deeply were less healthy than those closer to the surface. Native species had overall better health than non- native species with increasing flood stress. Analysis of growth forms showed that shrubs were significantly healthier than vines with increasing flood stress. There were no significant differences between trees and other growth forms. Higher flood tolerance did not map cleanly onto plant families. The most flood tolerant and least flood tolerant species were both in the genus Acer (maples).
Download or read book New Urban Ecological Restoration Techniques written by Jie Si Ma and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Urban expansion has led to native habitat destruction. Meanwhile, cities produce large quantities of plant residue wastes. To explore the potential to use plant residues to restore native habitats in cities, this thesis compared the short-term effects of deciduous leaf litter and plant residue compost on topsoil quality and seeded native herbaceous plant establishment. To determine if natural plant colonisation alone can restore native plants, the thesis compared the establishment and ecological characteristic and diversity of naturally colonised plant species on the barren surface of modified and unmodified soil. Following three months of repeated measurements after amendment, compost significantly increased soil moisture, organic matter, extractable NPK, and significantly decreased soil pH and bulk density. The decrease in soil pH due to incorporating compost with higher pH than the receiving soil showed that compost may not restore soil pH in a predictable manner. The average number and median shoot lengths of seeded native plants on compost-amended soil were significantly higher than those on control three months after germination. Compost may therefore be used for purposes such as quick establishment of dense tall native plant cover. Conversely, leaf litter did not significantly change the abovementioned soil properties in the short term. However, the average number of seeded native plants on leaf litter-amended soil three months after germination was significantly higher than control and insignificantly different from that on compost-amended soil. At that time, seeded native plants on leaf litter-soil exhibited stunt growth relative to other treatments. Leaf litter might then be used to establishing slow-growth native lawns for urban native landscaping practices. But this technique requires further refinement. Above barren soils across experimental treatments, exotic weeds consisted mostly of the naturally colonised plants. This means natural plant colonisation may not effectively restore native plants. There was no significant difference in the colonising plant average species richness and diversity across treatments. The steepness of the colonising species' rank-abundance curves were similar between treatments. Thus, natural plant colonisation on amended or un-amended soil could not lead to the establishment of particular plant species. Due to soil nutrient-enrichment, Canada thistles (Cirsium arvense) occupied a greater proportion of colonised species on compost-treated soil than the most dominant colonised species on other types of soil. Thus, compost amendment of soil may not restore plant communities with high species diversity. Moreover, the average number of the colonising weeds above compost-amended soil was significantly higher than control, while that of weeds above leaf litter-amended soil was significantly lower than control three months after site preparation. At that time, weeds on leaf litter-amended soil were significantly shorter than those on compost-amended soil and control. This means leaf litter could impede exotic weeds while compost had the reverse effect. Compost should only be used to establish native plants if exotic weeds are removed or when the site soil seed bank and adjacent land contain few exotics. While this thesis documented the different short-term effects of plant residue compost and deciduous leaf litter on soil and plants, long-term investigations may find potentially different applications for the different types of plant residues in native plant restoration projects with different purposes. Reusing plant residues differentially could mean that composting may not always be necessary in plant waste management and urban ecological restoration may help to reduce waste output from cities.
Download or read book Restoring Degraded and Invaded Landscapes written by Michaela Jean Woods and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecosystem disturbance and degradation have led to dramatically altered plant communities, necessitating their restoration to return to native states. One disturbance is emerald ash borer, an exotic, invasive insect that has decimated ash tree populations creating gaps in many forest canopies. Due to the influx of exotic invasive plant species, traditional forest recovery has been altered in that plant species establishing in gaps favor invasive shrubs to native tree seedlings. Thus, I measured the growth and survival of native tree species planted within a forest affected by emerald ash borer to determine what species may outcompete invasive species and regenerate into the forest canopy. I found that butternut and shellbark hickory trees had high survival rates compared to red oak, and could be target species for replacing ash trees in stands impacted by emerald ash borer. When fallow fields are dominated by Callery pear, a pervasive new invader in the Eastern US, native plant establishment may be limited. I found that Callery pear tends to invade near forested edges of grassland ecosystems, likely because there is increased propagule pressure from generalist frugivorous birds which forage both in Callery pear invaded areas and on forest edges creating seed rain. Callery pear occurs where there is less ground cover of forbs and grasses suggesting that it either invades in areas that have less plant cover or that it inhibits the establishment of native species. In a lab-based experiment, I found that Callery pear is likely allelopathic and can inhibit the germination of common prairie species which could prevent its establishment. Further, in the field, I found that Callery pear can acidify the soil where it establishes, and it may input carbon into the soil system which changes the activities of microorganisms in the soil. Together, these changes to soil chemistry can reduce the likelihood of native species to establish and can prevent invasive species from establishing, potentially lending to the creation of dense monocultures where this tree invades. Another disturbance to many ecosystems is industrial agriculture, which has degraded native ecosystems reducing soil organic matter content, water holding capacity and altering chemistry. During traditional succession in the Eastern US deciduous ecosystems, native plant cover would regenerate with time in open fields and forest canopies could develop within 50-100 years of passive regeneration. The first plants to establish during succession have long distance dispersal mechanisms and can survive harsh environments with little plant cover and eroded soils. When assessing the change in soil chemistry from 0-to 100-year-old forests regenerated on previous agricultural fields, we identified a recovery in soil carbon, nitrogen and water capacity, which increased the growth of bur oak seedlings when grown in a greenhouse environment, indicating that restoring soils could promote the regeneration of oak species. To accelerate the process of forest restoration informed by this study, I implemented soil amendments and planted transitional prairie communities to increase native biodiversity and resist invasion in a fallow agricultural field, which led to the initiation of a long-term research and forest restoration site, outlined here.
Download or read book Riparian Areas written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-10-10 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that wetlands be protected from degradation because of their important ecological functions including maintenance of high water quality and provision of fish and wildlife habitat. However, this protection generally does not encompass riparian areasâ€"the lands bordering rivers and lakesâ€"even though they often provide the same functions as wetlands. Growing recognition of the similarities in wetland and riparian area functioning and the differences in their legal protection led the NRC in 1999 to undertake a study of riparian areas, which has culminated in Riparian Areas: Functioning and Strategies for Management. The report is intended to heighten awareness of riparian areas commensurate with their ecological and societal values. The primary conclusion is that, because riparian areas perform a disproportionate number of biological and physical functions on a unit area basis, restoration of riparian functions along America's waterbodies should be a national goal.
Download or read book Biogeochemistry of Wetlands written by K. Ramesh Reddy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-09-10 with total page 926 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The globally important nature of wetland ecosystems has led to their increased protection and restoration as well as their use in engineered systems. Underpinning the beneficial functions of wetlands are a unique suite of physical, chemical, and biological processes that regulate elemental cycling in soils and the water column. This book provides an in-depth coverage of these wetland biogeochemical processes related to the cycling of macroelements including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur, secondary and trace elements, and toxic organic compounds. In this synthesis, the authors combine more than 100 years of experience studying wetlands and biogeochemistry to look inside the black box of elemental transformations in wetland ecosystems. This new edition is updated throughout to include more topics and provide an integrated view of the coupled nature of biogeochemical cycles in wetland systems. The influence of the elemental cycles is discussed at a range of scales in the context of environmental change including climate, sea level rise, and water quality. Frequent examples of key methods and major case studies are also included to help the reader extend the basic theories for application in their own system. Some of the major topics discussed are: Flooded soil and sediment characteristics Aerobic-anaerobic interfaces Redox chemistry in flooded soil and sediment systems Anaerobic microbial metabolism Plant adaptations to reducing conditions Regulators of organic matter decomposition and accretion Major nutrient sources and sinks Greenhouse gas production and emission Elemental flux processes Remediation of contaminated soils and sediments Coupled C-N-P-S processes Consequences of environmental change in wetlands# The book provides the foundation for a basic understanding of key biogeochemical processes and its applications to solve real world problems. It is detailed, but also assists the reader with box inserts, artfully designed diagrams, and summary tables all supported by numerous current references. This book is an excellent resource for senior undergraduates and graduate students studying ecosystem biogeochemistry with a focus in wetlands and aquatic systems.
Download or read book New England s Forests written by and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Disaster Resilience written by National Academies and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2012-12-29 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.
Download or read book Community based Environmental Protection written by and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Wetland Creation and Restoration written by Jon A. Kusler and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a preliminary evaluation of the status of the science of wetland creation and restoration in the United States. It contains a series of regional reviews. Each review summarizes wetland creation and restoration experiences in broadly defined wetland regions (e.g. Pacific coastal wetlands, wooded wetlands of the Southeast). It also includes a series of theme papers, covering a wide range of topics of general application to wetland creation and restoration (hydrology, management techniques, planning).
Download or read book Stream Corridor Restoration written by and published by National Technical Info Svc. This book was released on 1998 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This document is a cooperative effort among fifteen Federal agencies and partners to produce a common reference on stream corridor restoration. It responds to a growing national and international interest in restoring stream corridors.
Download or read book Regulated Rivers written by Albert Lillehammer and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taken from the proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Regulated Streams, these essays cover problems of river regulation, considering both the theoretical implications and the practical effects of these measures. International in scope, this collection will provide new insight into the topic for freshwater biologists and others concerned with the research and planning of water power projects.
Download or read book Invasive Species in Forests and Rangelands of the United States written by Therese M. Poland and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book describes the serious threat of invasive species to native ecosystems. Invasive species have caused and will continue to cause enormous ecological and economic damage with ever increasing world trade. This multi-disciplinary book, written by over 100 national experts, presents the latest research on a wide range of natural science and social science fields that explore the ecology, impacts, and practical tools for management of invasive species. It covers species of all taxonomic groups from insects and pathogens, to plants, vertebrates, and aquatic organisms that impact a diversity of habitats in forests, rangelands and grasslands of the United States. It is well-illustrated, provides summaries of the most important invasive species and issues impacting all regions of the country, and includes a comprehensive primary reference list for each topic. This scientific synthesis provides the cultural, economic, scientific and social context for addressing environmental challenges posed by invasive species and will be a valuable resource for scholars, policy makers, natural resource managers and practitioners.
Download or read book EPA 630 R written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Drought risk management a strategic approach written by Speed, Robert and published by UNESCO Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Urban Stormwater Management in the United States written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid conversion of land to urban and suburban areas has profoundly altered how water flows during and following storm events, putting higher volumes of water and more pollutants into the nation's rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These changes have degraded water quality and habitat in virtually every urban stream system. The Clean Water Act regulatory framework for addressing sewage and industrial wastes is not well suited to the more difficult problem of stormwater discharges. This book calls for an entirely new permitting structure that would put authority and accountability for stormwater discharges at the municipal level. A number of additional actions, such as conserving natural areas, reducing hard surface cover (e.g., roads and parking lots), and retrofitting urban areas with features that hold and treat stormwater, are recommended.
