Evaluating mitigation effectiveness of Californian vernal pools using community type classification

Background/Question/Methods Vernal pool vegetation has only recently been sampled adequately enough to floristically define associations, alliances, and orders. Prior to this, agencies involved in the protection, conservation, and management of vernal pools had only a statewide laundry list of vernal pool endemics, preferents, and federally listed plant taxa with which to judge the health of natural and created vernal pools. There was no understanding of how many community types might exist nor of which might be rare and unprotected. Based on a statewide sample of > 2000 releves in 700 pools we defined 26 associations, 6 alliances, 3 orders, and 1 class and attributed them with diagnostic taxa, associated listed taxa, habitat traits, and relative degree of rarity and protection. Results/Conclusions Our research was subsidized by several agencies that had very pragmatic objectives (California Department of Fish and Game, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US EPA. We recognized that an emphasis on basic research and publications in peer-reviewed journals would not—in and of itself—cause these sponsors to use our results in rewriting protocols for monitoring and evaluating candidates for take and for assessing compensatory mitigation projects. We had to find a way to get the attention of staff at the right agency levels, and then to make our approach so obviously useful and an improvement of past approaches that staff were motivated to beginning a process of evaluation and adoption. At first, our attempts were met with cautious coolness. For example, when we developed a training course to teach staff scientists and private consultants how to sample vernal pool vegetation and how to key it out to appropriate classification levels, it was done pro bono because no agency would subsidize us or even promote the class. A year later, however, US EPA had agreed to help fund a second offering and a few months later, EPA hosted a multi-agency meeting on vernal pool management attended by 140 persons and a new edition of Manual of California Vegetation was published that adopted our classification. There is now talk in several agencies and the release of RFPs about writing new protocols for vernal pool vegetation assessment, conservation, and restoration that would be more ecologically relevant and regionally appropriate than protocols that have been in place for some time.