Vegetation and Revegetation

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Revegetation.jpg

The Plant Kingdom and its soils form the green skin of the earth, and a pool of biodiversity. Vegetation provides food and resources described in Agriculture and Agroforestry. As a forested Ecoregion with a significant land base being managed for fiber production Forestry is an important topic. Riparian Buffering Functions are particularly important for acquatic habitats, and more braodly, vegetation mediates the Hydrology on a watershed scale. Revegetation is a broad term that describes a variety of practices that we use to modify the structural or compositional qualities of vegetation.

A typical revegetation effort involves three general components: 1) disturbances to create or sustain a niche in which to introduce new species, 2) introduction of that species onto the site with seeds, cuttings, or rooted stock, and 3) some kind of aftercare, such as supplemental water and nutrients, or additional disturbances to favor the introduced species. While we are focused on discrete projects, revegetation occurs in the context of natural vegetative evolution, driven by climate, hydrology, genetics, dispersal, competition, stress, and ongoing disturbance regimes. This page is a master topic page to organize information on the wiki to support revegetation practice.

Species Identification

Being able to systematically identify plant species is the building block for

Understanding Vegetation Among Landforms

Vegetation varies systematically based on landscape position. which affects the soil parent material and hydrology. The first question at any site, are what are the viable natural vegetations for this landscape position. Resources that observe natural vegetation patterns support this work, and improve a practitioners ability to make observations in the field. A number of general resource consider vegetation across landform.

Uplands and Forests

Wetlands and Riparian

Riparian

Barrier Beach

Tidal Wetlands

  • Kunze 1984 describes an inventory of high quality tidal marsh reference sites around Puget Sound.
  • Kunze & Cornelius 1982 provides a similar resource for tidal wetlands on the Washington outer coast.
  • Jefferson 1974 provides a seminal overview of Oregon coastal marsh composition over elevation and environmental controls which includes species common in the Salish Sea.
  • Eilers 1974 provides a detailed analysis of a estuarine island.

Freshwater Tidal

There are notably few resources for designing composition and structure of freshwater tidal vegetation.

Disturbance and Soil Restoration

How to we create a niche in the field that is suitable for propagation?

  • Soil Restoration - on sites with severe distrubance, reinitiation of soil structures and processes may be critical to rapidly establishing vegetation.
  • Mulching Strategies - surface application of organic material has the dual function of supressing existing vegetation and fueling soil processes.
  • Tillage Strategies - for millennia, tillage has been used to create niches for introducing plants. Now we have machines.

Introduced Species Control

A substantial effort within the revegetation community involves the application of herbicide in an attempt to control the spread of non-indigenous species, often followed by afforestation. So far, information on the wiki is organized around specific species, or topics:

Propagation and Planting Technique

How do we efficiently introduce species into a vegetation?

Aftercare Strategies

How to we favor target composition after propagation?

Regional Suppliers

The following workgroups provide materials with Salish Sea genetics

Evaluation and Monitoring

How do we qualitatively and quantitatively observe vegetation?

Species

Flora pages describe what we know about individual species listed by Genus using the "category:flora"

Other Vegetation Pages

Vegetation describe documents and topics related to vegetation dynamics