IGN 16 - Multiple Common Garden Experiments for Meeting Restoration Challenges: Difficulties and Potential Pitfalls

Wednesday, August 9, 2017: 1:30 PM-3:00 PM
C123, Oregon Convention Center
Organizer:
Susanne Schwinning, Texas State University
Co-organizer:
Lesley A. DeFalco, US Geological Survey, Westen Ecological Science Center
Moderator:
Lesley A. DeFalco, US Geological Survey, Westen Ecological Science Center
Large-scale anthropogenic disturbances by fire, extractive industries or other uses of wildlands is driving the effort to restore natural communities quickly before excessive degradation by secondary factors such as erosion or invasion by exotic species makes recovery virtually impossible. Until recently, ecological restoration has aimed at replacing damaged vegetation with locally collected plant materials so that suitability to the local environment can be assured. In practice, local collections may be unavailable for large scale restoration efforts and materials that may be suitable today may not remain suitable over the life span of the species due to rapid climate change. A concerted scientific approach is therefore needed to match genes and traits with environmental conditions to establish populations that are viable in the long run. Instrumental in this research agenda has been the implementation of multiple common garden experiments, in which ecotypes collected from the full range of a given species are each grown under a range of environmental conditions. However, this ostensibly straight-forward approach for selecting traits or genotypes on the basis of growth and survivorship in a given environment also has potential pitfalls. We asked our speakers to focus their remarks on three basic questions: • Which relevant adaptations do we overlook by working with greenhouse-raised transplants and what are the implications for restoration? • How do we interpret short-term responses to environmental fluctuation in terms of the climate adaptation of populations? • What is the best-practice protocol for interpreting the results of multiple common garden experiments for restoration?
Cancelled
 Testing the effectiveness of assisted dispersal to fill a new climactic niche in the Northern Great Plains
Lauren A. Dennhardt, Valley City State University; Kathryn A. Yurkonis, University of North Dakota
 Scaling up: Common gardens to global restoration initiatives
Cara R. Nelson, University of Montana; Alexis L. Gibson, University of Montana
 Can local adaptation research in plants inform selection of native plant materials? An analysis of experimental methodologies
Alexis L. Gibson, University of Montana; Erin K. Espeland, USDA-ARS; Viktoria Wagner, Masaryk University; Cara R. Nelson, University of Montana
 What are ecotypes adapted to? Insights from common garden experiments across geographic gradients
David J. Gibson, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Sara G. Baer, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Travis J. Neal, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Loretta Johnson, Kansas State University
 Linking common gardens with landscape genetics: A synergistic approach to guide restoration
Daniel F. Shryock, U.S. Geological Survey; Lesley A. DeFalco, Western Ecological Research Center; Todd C. Esque, U.S. Geological Survey
 Effect of transplant size on early survivorship
Nathan A Custer, Texas State University
 Understanding growth-survivorship tradeoffs in restoration
Susanne Schwinning, Texas State University; Nathan A Custer, Texas State University; Lesley A. DeFalco, Western Ecological Research Center
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