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By John Vanek, PhD Associate Wildlife Biologist®  A beautiful common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis), the most abundant and widespread species found at Nachusa. As scientists, we know a lot about snakes. We know that snakes evolved from lizards. We know that snakes don’t have eyelids or external ears. We know they can eat things bigger than their own head. Some species, like the black-tailed rattlesnake, are good mothers, stick around after birth, and protect their offspring. Recently, it was discovered the snakes can even have friends! Suffice it to say, snakes are awesome. So awesome, in fact, that some of us prefer them to grasshopper sparrows and fringed gentians (don’t hit me!). Yes, we herpetologists (scientists that study reptiles and amphibians) are a weird bunch, with our metal probes and pillowcases . . . anyway, I digress.  A Dekay’s brown snake (Storeria dekayi) that didn’t make it across Naylor Road. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon event, even in protected areas. While we know a lot about snakes and how cool they are, we still have a lot to learn, particularly when it comes to ecological restoration. Unlike birds and insects, snakes don’t have wings. Snakes are also terrible at crossing roads (probably because they don’t have legs). So, the big question is if you build it, will they come? That is, if you go through the hard work of restoring an old ag field back to tallgrass prairie, will snakes recolonize the site? Dr. Richard King and I tried to tackle this question in a recent publication creatively titled “Responses of Grassland Snakes to Tallgrass Prairie Restoration.” In short, yes, but it’s complicated!  The eastern fox snake (Pantherophis vulpinus) is one of many species that make Nachusa Grasslands their home. Friend to the farmer, this species feeds mostly on rodents. Unfortunately, due to a habit of vibrating their tail (see video at the end), they are often confused for rattlesnakes and killed. Before we dive into what we found, how do herpetologists actually study snakes? It’s not like you can lean against a shady bur oak and listen for the sounds of singing snakes (yes, this is a playful dig at my ornithologist friends). One option is to simply walk around and look for snakes. This is, however, not very effective. Think of how many snakes you’ve stumbled across at Nachusa. Maybe a handful at most, right? Certainly not enough to do some fancy statistics. Nor will snakes stumble into a tiny metal box baited with peanut butter (sorry mammologist friends, I had to make it fair to the ornithologists!).  A handful of plains garter snakes (Thamnophis radix) found under a single board. The three smaller males were attempting to mate with the larger female (top left). So, what is the intrepid herpetologist to do? We take advantage of a snake’s natural tendency to hide under things, so we employ something called “artificial cover object surveys.” What this means is that we put out things that snakes will hide under (in our case plywood boards and rubber mats), and then go back later and check each one. What does a check entail, you may ask? Great question, and the answer is simple: bend down, lift the board, and then try to grab every snake you see! Simple, but not easy; those little buggers are fast! An unexpectedly large common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) found under a board. Even seasoned herpetologists get impressed by big snakes! Now the nuts and bolts of our study. To address the question of snakes and habitat restoration, we deployed approximately 240 snake boards across 12 restoration units (2–25 years since restoration) at Nachusa. We (ok, mostly Rich) checked each board roughly once a week from May to October from 2013–2016. This resulted in sacrificing our lower backs for science a total of 15,720 times over the four years. (The astute reader may notice the math doesn’t work out perfectly, and that’s because life often gets in the way of checking snake boards!) Was it worth it? You bet! Overall, we caught 1,028 individual snakes of four focal species: 90 plains garter snakes, 112 eastern fox snakes, 347 Dekay’s brown snakes, and 479 common garter snakes. Each snake was given a unique marking so we could identify it if captured again, and we also measured and weighed each snake. We also found a few other species in small numbers.  We conducted snake surveys at twelve units from 2013-2016: Clear Creek East (CE), Clear Creek West (CW), Franklin Creek (FC), Holland East (HE), Holland North (HN),Hook Larson (HL), Holland West (HW), Main Unit (MU), Stone Barn (SB), Sand Farm (SF), Thelma Carpenter (TC) and West Heinkel (WH).  A juvenile Dekay’s brown snake (Storeria dekayi). This species feeds heavily on worms and slugs. Herpetologically inclined gardeners are always happy to find a Dekay’s brown snake amongst their zucchini plants! Right off the bat, we see that all four species readily colonized tallgrass prairie restorations at Nachusa, which is great news! We also found that there was no relationship between restoration age and the abundance or occupancy of plains garter snakes, eastern fox snakes, or common garter snakes. That is, newly-restored sites were just as likely to have these species as older restorations. However, older sites were much more likely to have Dekay’s brown snakes than younger sites. This is a really cool finding, as Dekay’s brown snakes are the smallest of the four species (adults rarely exceed 18 inches), and they also have the smallest home ranges. This suggests that smaller species with limited dispersal capabilities might be slower to colonize restorations. Intuitive for sure, but it’s always great to have data!  A stunning smooth green snake (Opheodrys vernalis) from Lee County, IL. I hope this species will once again call Nachusa its home! Finally, there was a glaring omission from our snake board data: we found zero smooth green snakes! This was really odd, as the species was once common across northern Illinois, and we found them to be relatively common at nearby Green River Wildlife Management Area. However, snakes can be really hard to find, so the question became, “Are smooth green snakes truly absent from Nachusa, or did we simply fail to find them?” To address this, we took our data from Green River and used a statistical technique called logistic regression to calculate something called a "detection probability". The results? Given our approximately 15,000 cover board checks, we estimated there was a 99.9% chance we would have detected them if they were indeed present at Nachusa. Could we have missed them? Certainly, but it is highly unlikely. So, why are there no smooth green snakes at Nachusa? The most likely explanation is that they simply did not survive in the small remnants at Nachusa prior to restoration. Like Dekay’s brown snakes, smooth green snakes are quite small and are probably not so great at colonizing new areas. In addition, smooth green snakes specialize on eating insects and spiders, and they may be particularly susceptible to insecticide use relative to other species with broader diets. So, if they didn’t survive at Nachusa, crossing miles of roads and ag fields might pose too big of a challenge. Therefore, while a “wait and see” approach might work for other species (such as Dekay's brown snake), captive breeding and translocation may be necessary to establish populations of smooth green snakes at Nachusa. This approach has shown great promise in the Chicago suburbs, and I hope one day to see the tail end of a smooth green snake slipping away into a tussock of little bluestem at Nachusa Grasslands.  Another fun tool of the trade: the magnification on jeweler’s goggles helps to identify the unique markings on juvenile snakes. In conclusion, we found that Nachusa boasts plentiful populations of at least four species of grassland snake, and these snakes are not limited to the remnants, but occur broadly throughout restoration units. Other species also occur, including the eastern hog-nosed snake, eastern milk snake, North American racer, and common water snake. However, the smooth green snake, a species that is common in nearby Green River Management Area, appears to be truly absent at Nachusa. I propose they be considered a candidate for assisted translocation or reintroduction, pending further study, of course. Thanks for reading! Have you seen any snakes at Nachusa? If so, what kind? Let me know in the comments, and feel free to send me an email for snake identification help from Nachusa or anywhere else! Many harmless snakes, such as this eastern fox snake (Pantherophis vulpinus), will defensively vibrate their tails.
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By Elizabeth Bach Ecosystem Restoration Scientist It’s a chilly, rainy spring afternoon, and I sit in front of the computer. Yet I can feel the heat of a sticky August afternoon, hear the whine of cicadas, and see the golden blooms of sunflowers. Mentally, I’m systematically walking through the prairie, carefully identifying all the plants. At Nachusa, many of us, myself included, find working outside in the prairies, savannas, and wetlands most rewarding. However, there is an incredibly important part of conservation work that happens at the computer: data entry and analysis.  As the staff scientist at Nachusa, one of my primary duties is to analyze and share data. My primary tool for this work is a free program called “R.” In R, I can manipulate data, produce graphs, run statistical tests, and even produce a final report. Analyzing these data helps everyone at Nachusa refine restoration practices, inspires new ideas, and deepens our knowledge of the habitats and the organisms that live there. Sharing these data in presentations and publications allows us to share lessons learned and best practices used at Nachusa with others in both the conservation and scientific communities. In turn, we also learn from data from other sites. At Nachusa we are lucky to have several scientific researchers working at the site, who collect, analyze, and share data with us. We also have some data, collected over the years by The Nature Conservancy staff and collaborators, which haven’t been analyzed and shared. A key goal for Nachusa is to analyze these legacy datasets and share them.  All this brings me back to my computer on an early spring afternoon. When there is less work to be done outside, I’m busy working with datasets on the computer, building graphs, thinking through which metrics best represent the observations made on the prairie, and building statistical models to understand how the Nachusa ecosystem has changed and how it might continue to change into the future. All this work is done with a few lines of code on the computer. While very different from the outdoor joys and challenges of data collection, there are both joys and challenges with this work.  I often think of data analysis as a mystery to solve. What will the data show? What will I learn? How might this challenge or confirm observations from other scientists in other places? Every dataset is a new adventure, and I find a sort of excitement in that. It can also be frustrating. I spend a lot of time finding and correcting mistakes. There is no travel guide to inform my decisions. Fortunately, I can work with collaborators as travel buddies on these adventures, to bounce ideas off them, and gain a new perspective. One of the joys of working at Nachusa is being at the intersection of many paths of scientific research and natural history observation. Working with people with different expertise, skills, and perspectives deepens my understanding of science, the tallgrass prairie, and Nachusa. Elizabeth Bach is the Ecosystem Restoration Scientist at Nachusa Grasslands. She works with scientists, land managers, and stewards to holistically investigate questions about tallgrass prairie restoration ecology.
By Angie Burke Volunteer Coordinator, The Nature Conservancy  It's shortly after sunrise as my volunteers and I begin to check the small mammal traps we set the night before. We are all familiar with the saying “It’s the little things that matter”, and it’s the management of the tallgrass prairies at Nachusa Grasslands that has made a big difference for the littlest of things— mammals. Our paper “Early Small Mammal Responses to Bison Reintroduction and Prescribed Fire in Restored Tallgrass Prairies”, coauthored with Dr. Holly Jones and Dr. Nick Barber, sheds light on how the varying management of prescribed fire, coupled with the reintroduction of grazing bison, has created a habitat haven for the small mammals in a mix of agriculture and rural development.
blocking our safe access to a site, to capturing meadow jumping mice awakening from their winter slumber, every sampling season held a new adventure for us.  Left to right: meadow-jumping mouse, deer mouse, thirteen-lined ground squirrel, and white-footed mouse Some of the little buddies we captured and released were deer mice, white-footed mice, prairie voles, northern short tailed shrew, meadow jumping mice, harvest mice, and my favorite, the 13-lined ground squirrel. Rain, snow, or shine, the little buddies are welcomed to the study each season with excitement by the many stewards, volunteers, and scientists that call Nachusa home.  It's spring, so the traps are easy to see, as a line of them are checked right after sunrise. In the first two years since bison were reintroduced, we found fewer small mammals in older sites relative to new restorations and fewer as time since fire increased. Additionally, there was a higher diversity of what we did document in those older sites and slightly lower diversity (fewer than one species, on average) in sites where bison were present. This difference was driven mainly by prairie voles; fire removes litter and residual dead vegetation which is important habitat for voles. The overall abundance was especially influenced by the deer mice, which are able to use the areas with a higher prevalence of bare ground associated with frequent/recent fire on the landscape.  I'm measuring the tail length of a deer mouse. Before the small mammals are released they are identified, weighed and measured. A chip is also inserted under the skin so I know if an individual returns to the traps multiple times. Many did! Overall we found that bison reintroduction had fairly weak impacts to small mammal communities in the first few years. Bison, when reintroduced at a relatively low stocking rate, are not likely to cause significant shifts to this community or, by extension, to the seed predation and dispersal functions they serve in prairies. The many different types of habitat created by the managers at Nachusa varying prescribed fire with grazing bison maintain the diversity of small mammals on the landscape scale. Continuing to document the changes in the small mammals through time, while capturing the changes with other animal, invertebrate, and plant composition, will help to show how the little things matter on a big scale when it comes to tallgrass prairie restoration.
By Jess Fliginger  Meadow jumping mouse (Zapus hudsonius) In 2013, Dr. Holly Jones started conducting a long-term research project at Nachusa Grasslands on quantifying the effects of disturbance-related management strategies on small mammal populations at restored and remnant prairie sites. The reintroduction of bison in 2014 allowed for a powerful before and after bison impact study that documented the effects of bison grazing on the small mammal communities. Data collected on species responses to bison, prescribed fire frequency, restoration age, and vegetation composition will inform decisions regarding abundance and biodiversity for small mammals. Small mammals play important roles in the food web by influencing vegetation structure through herbivory and seed predation, as well as serving as prey for predator species. So far, plant communities with bison grazing are becoming more diverse and more abundant with small mammals. In the beginning, Dr. Jones ran the small mammal project by herself for a year until she was able to pass it on to her Master’s student Angela Burke in 2014. It was quite a challenge to run the project on her own, and volunteers have become an essential component to keep it going. Over the years, we have had more than 100 volunteers participate to help check traps in the morning and reset traps in the afternoon.  Dr. Holly Jones and PhD student Erin Rowland bait the small mammal traps. On the first day of small mammal trapping, or as we like to call it “smammaling”, we prep 150 metal Sherman traps by baiting them with peanut butter and oats. Our small army of volunteers, 3 or 4 people, create an assembly line, with one person spreading just a dab of peanut butter on the backplate and the other sprinkling a small pinch of oats inside. Once all traps have been prepped, we start stacking rows of them, Tetris style, in the back of Scarlet, our NIU mule.  Out of the four seasons we sample for small mammals, August and October have the tallest vegetation, making it difficult to locate our poles. We flag the highest plant we can find nearby; for me it’s usually prairie dock or good ol’ big bluestem, and we try to navigate our way through the meandering paths of the tallgrass prairie jungle." We take off to set 25 traps at six of our 5x5 grid sites, hoping our plans don’t get foiled by any bison delays or strange weather. Each site has flagged poles to indicate where the trap must be set; however, finding them can sometimes be a challenge. Bison love using our poles as backscratchers, and they are often found sprawled across the prairie. At each pole we place an open trap where it will sit until an unsuspecting critter passes by and catches a whiff of irresistible Jif.  The mice spend the night at their “mouse hotel” feasting on peanut butter and oats until we are back to process them in the morning. I always get a rush of excitement as I walk up to a trap and notice the door is closed. When I peek inside the trap, I am usually able to see a little face staring back at me. Occasionally, I’ll get a trigger-no-capture and my excitement will fade to dissatisfaction. Likewise, thieves are a constant problem. Some especially small, speedy daredevils are able to run in to the trap, take some quick bites of peanut butter, and run out without triggering it. We keep tabs on which traps have been thieved and adjust/replace them accordingly.  Tail measurements are taken from a meadow jumping mouse. To process the small mammals, we record the weight and take measurements on the right hind foot, tail, and body using a caliper. In addition, we determine their sex, age, reproductive status, species, and PIT tag number. Some of the species we have captured at our sites and record data on include thirteen-lined ground squirrel, deer mouse, white-footed mouse, western harvest mouse, meadow jumping mouse, prairie vole, meadow vole, and masked and short-tailed shrews. The most common species we capture is the deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus. Depending on whether it’s a new capture or recap, we will carefully insert a PIT tag underneath its skin – similar to microchipping your pet – as a way to keep track of its movements, survival, and reproduction throughout the study. It’s always a treat when we have an overwinter or recapture from the previous year; they were the lucky ones to survive the long cold winter! Finally, we provide complimentary haircuts to all new buddies and collect the hair to run in the stable isotope lab. The information gathered from each sample result can tell us about their diet and role in the food web.  Dr. Jones' daughter, 5-year-old Aliana, is our smallest, but mightiest, volunteer. Since 2015, I have been volunteering with Dr. Jones’ small mammal project. This year I was given the opportunity to help run the project and process the small mammals until her incoming PhD student, Erin Rowland, arrived. I took up the challenge, and with practice I became a pro. I would say my favorite part of the job is meeting the volunteers and training them how to be great smammalers. I enjoy acting as a Nachusa tour guide to all newcomers, young and old.  Would you like to volunteer on the small mammal project? Although anyone is welcome to volunteer, the majority of our helpers are undergraduate students who enjoy a break away from the classroom. Volunteering for the small mammal project gets you to spend time outside, which is beneficial to your health and well-being. It inspires the public to engage in the scientific process, appreciate native plants and animals, and meet others who care about our environment. Furthermore, it helps develop team building skills that are important for any job setting. Volunteers are the heart and soul of the small mammal project, and without them I’m not sure it would be able to persist. There is a lot to accomplish within the 12 consecutive days we are at Nachusa smammaling, and any help is greatly appreciated! If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Erin Rowland. To me, the small mammal project is all about making new and old friends — volunteers and mice alike. Small mammal research has been supported by the Friends of Nachusa Grasslands science grants from 2015 to 2018.
Consider a donation to the Friends of Nachusa Grasslands to support the ongoing science! By Jason Willand, PhD I first visited Nachusa Grasslands in August 2008 while I was working for the Illinois Natural History Survey. I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the restorations that comprised the preserve and never envisioned myself conducting research on these restored prairies. As fate would have it, I returned to school in 2009 to start work on my doctorate degree and was able to fit part of my research into the restorations at Nachusa. The research was for the first chapter of my dissertation, where I examined the role of seed and bud banks for plant community regeneration during prairie restoration. The field portion of this work lasted only five days, and afterwards I was hoping that I would have a chance to return to conduct more research. As fate would have it again, I was able to conduct a small research project at Nachusa as I was wrapping up my dissertation in July 2014.  Nachusa Grassland bison herd The research project was the result of brainstorming between my dissertation advisor Sara Baer and myself. With the imminent introduction of bison on the preserve in October 2014, we wanted to develop a potential long-term monitoring project. We decided that an interesting study would be to examine the resource availability of the remnant and restored prairies before the bison were introduced. Bison were the dominant grazers in the tallgrass prairie ecosystem before settlement by the pioneers. They play a “keystone” role in the maintenance and diversity of prairies because of their wallowing behavior and preferential grazing on graminoids (grasses and sedges). Most bison research to date has been conducted either on private game ranches or remnant prairies, with little research coming from restored prairies.  Collecting soil samples We collected data on three resources that could affect where bison would graze in the introduction area: plant biomass, the forage quality of the biomass, and soil carbon and nitrogen. Knowledge of plant biomass provides a rough estimate of the amount of plant matter available for bison consumption. Forage quality of plant biomass is informative because it not only tells us how much of the plant matter is actually digestible to the bison, but also the fat and crude protein content of the plant matter. Soil carbon and nitrogen are vital because as a plant uptakes them, they allow a plant to produce important macromolecules for growth, such as proteins.  In order to adequately sample the bison introduction area we surveyed three different prairie types: remnant prairies, restored prairies more than 15 years old and restored prairies less than 5 years old. To quantify potential differences in resource availability between the three prairie types we collected plant biomass and soil samples from three different “fields” in each prairie type. Both the plant biomass and soil samples were returned to the laboratory at Southern Illinois University, where they were processed. Forage quality samples were sent to the University of Wisconsin Madison Soil and Forage Laboratory for analysis of seven components of forage quality.  Prescribed fire increases forage quality We found that the restored prairies less than 5 years old had almost twice the amount of plant biomass compared to the restored prairies more than 15 years old and more than twice that of the remnant prairies. Surprisingly, there was little difference in forage quality and stored carbon and nitrogen in soil among the three prairie types. The similarity in forage quality between the three prairie types may be attributed to prescribed burning, as all the fields were burned in April 2014 three months before we sampled them. Prescribed burning has been found to increase forage quality for up to a year after a fire and may have created homogenous plant biomass on the landscape. We expected soil carbon and nitrogen to be higher in the remnant prairies because these soils have not been tilled, a disturbance that has been found to reduce the storage of carbon and nitrogen in agricultural soils. The remnant prairies we sampled perhaps had a lower storage of carbon and nitrogen than expected because the soil was fairly shallow in comparison to the typical deep, loamy soils that characterize many remnant prairies.  The findings of this study suggest that bison may prefer the youngest restored prairies because there is simply more plant biomass available and little difference in the forage quality from the other prairie types. Even with these preliminary data it is still difficult to predict where bison will graze. Other factors that need to be considered are the dietary preferences of male and female bison and how prescribed burning creates a more heterogeneous landscape in the three prairie types. Post-introduction data have not been collected, so at this point any predictions of landscape use by bison is speculative at best. Maybe fate will strike again and I will be able to collect more data at Nachusa sometime in the near future. Jason Willand is an associate professor of biology at Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, MO where he currently serves as the assistant department chair and chair of the conservation section of the Missouri Academy of Sciences.
By Jenn Simons Nachusa Grasslands Science Extern On January 10th, 2019 I made a simple phone call to Nachusa Grasslands. Four months later, I was packing up my things to spend the summer living 480 miles east of my hometown. And with that, this Nebraska native ended up in an eastern tallgrass prairie state of both mind and place.  Jenn Simons Prior to that fateful January day, as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison I had narrowed down my research interests to the impact of conservation grazing on vegetation in midwestern prairies. My goal was to meet the requirements of my degree with a research project at the intersection of stewardship and applied ecology. Though the importance of disturbance to prairie management is well known, grazing on restored and remnant prairies has been a contested issue. Additional data to understand some of the trade-offs to using grazing for land management facilitate better understanding and application of the tools available in a land manager’s toolbox. The only thing that I was missing to begin my research was access to a herd of conservation grazers (nothing too significant, right?).  Here's a herd of conservation grazers! During my quest to connect with folks using grazing as a land management tool in prairies, I ended up on the phone with Dr. Elizabeth Bach at Nachusa. As many of you know, it’s hard not to fall in love with a site as beautiful and biodiverse as Nachusa Grasslands. It’s even harder not to fall in love if that site also features a herd of grazing animals and the existing infrastructure to study their impacts. After my first conversation with Dr. Bach, I was sold. Nachusa was where I wanted to be, and the impact of their bison was what I wanted to study.  Soil cores have been weighed and are placed into mini loaf pans to be dried at 110°C to remove water content. Bulk density measurements will be used to reflect the degree of soil compaction between grazed and ungrazed plots. In my case, and the case of many other grad students, there’s a gap in available funding between spring and fall school semesters. Grants and assistantships don’t always pan out, and many degrees in ecology require a large amount of data collection during the summer months (something rather at odds with working full time). Fortunately, 2019 marked the first summer for a Science Extern position at Nachusa. Open to all graduate students currently or beginning to conduct research specifically at Nachusa, the externship was to be awarded as an external grant to the student’s home university and paid as a salary, allowing the student to remain enrolled and continue receiving benefits. Just as the crew of seasonal employees spends their week supporting land stewardship needs throughout the summer, the role of the science extern was to support data stewardship needs throughout the summer. This position continues Nachusa’s history of encouraging research and providing opportunities for budding conservationists.  Quarter meter quadrats are placed along permanent transects in the bison exclosures and grazed plots; only plants located within the quadrats are identified and measured. With my fingers crossed, I submitted my application for the position and tried not to get my hopes up. I made a mental plan B (and C and D) for how I might be able to make my Nachusa research dreams come true if my application wasn’t successful. Work full time and collect data on the weekends? Take out loans? Choose a simpler research question? These are questions most grad students have had to seriously consider at some point. When sites like Nachusa are able to offer summer positions that merge science with practice, both the student and the site benefit from the results.  Similar species like Anemone cylindrica (right) and Anemone virginiana (left) can make plant identification trickier at different life stages. Much to my delight, plan A came through, and I never looked back. Since May I’ve been assisting in collection, entry, and analysis of core ecological data for Nachusa while simultaneously collecting my own data. To answer my research questions, I’m leveraging twenty-two fenced plots (10mx18m) replicated across habitat types in the 1,500 acres of bison habitat that were designed and built by Bill Kleiman, Cody Considine, TNC staff, and collaborating scientists prior to the introduction of the bison in 2014. As opposed to keeping something inside a fenced in area, these fenced plots function as “exclosures” and keep bison outside the fenced area. Building on plant community data taken in 2014-15 and 2017-18, I’m collecting additional data to compare changes in the vegetation diversity, structure, and abundance along with soil compaction between grazed and ungrazed land over time. With the mentorship of Dr. Bach and my advisor, John Harrington, these data will be analyzed and contribute to both the advancement of my degree and the understanding of how bison have impacted Nachusa’s vegetation.  An example of an exclosure in the southern bison unit with noticeable differences in forb and grass abundance between the grazed and ungrazed areas. In addition to the various science program tasks, opportunities abound to participate in stewardship activities and learn more about careers in ecology outside of academia. I’ve gotten to track Blanding’s turtle, set traps for small mammals, participate in evening moth surveys, observe rare plants in their natural settings, improve my R coding ability, utilize ArcGIS to create new maps, collect seeds and control weeds with the seasonal crew, and talk with highly knowledgeable volunteer land stewards. I can honestly say there’s no place I’d rather be this summer than at Nachusa Grasslands, and I’ve already become a better ecologist as a result.
By Leah Kleiman Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) is a perennial shrub native to temperate Asia and is invasive in the Midwestern United States. It now infests many savannas and woodlands and is difficult to eradicate.  A woodland understory choked with honeysuckle. Bill and Susan Kleiman and I are co-authors of a study recently published in the journal Ecological Restoration, titled “The Successful Control of Lonicera maackii (Amur honeysuckle) with Basal Bark Herbicide” (http://er.uwpress.org/content/36/4/267.full.pdf+html). Our study looked at the efficacy of basal bark application, where a mineral oil solution of herbicide is sprayed in a 6-inch band on the bark without cutting the plant. Our study found 100% mortality with basal bark treatment.  Here I am marking an individual in the control group for our study. A variety of other treatment methods are used to battle honeysuckle. Manual pulling works well on small individuals in soft ground, but becomes impossible with larger sizes. Cutting and treating the stumps with herbicide is effective, but very time-consuming. We recommend the cut-and-treat method for sensitive high-quality areas. A foliar spray of herbicide is effective and efficient, but will have much more off-target damage and can only be used in the growing season. Fire is a useful tool in keeping brush at bay, but it will only top-kill shrubs. The basal bark method is efficient, effective in all seasons, and has minimal off-target damage.  An example of honeysuckle top-killed by fire. It will likely re-sprout next year. Some things to keep in mind: 1) Re-treating is important for success. One treatment is not enough. Some shrubs will inevitably be missed, and yearly recruitment will occur until the seedbank is exhausted. 2) Honeysuckle treated in the dormant season may still leaf out and die later in the growing season. So if you notice this, it does not mean that your treatment has failed, but rather that you need to check back at a later date (typically late summer/fall).  An oak savanna understory free of honeysuckle. Our study concludes that basal bark treatment paired with regular fire is the optimal way to eradicate honeysuckle invasions. For more information on treating honeysuckle with basal bark, see the February 3, 2019 blog post “A Study on Controlling Amur Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii)” by Kaleb Baker.
By Kaleb Baker
One of the many signs delineating the honeysuckle subplots
Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) is an invasive shrub that flourishes along forest edges and in open woodlands such as those at Nachusa Grasslands. Amur honeysuckle shades out native flora with its early leaf-out and prolonged leaf retention, and when left uncontrolled, can produce a near monoculture, threatening biodiversity.
Land stewards everywhere have implemented a variety of different eradication methods, including hand pulling, cut-and-treat with herbicide, foliar-applied herbicide from backpacks or helicopters, basal bark herbicide treatments, and prescribed fire. Continuous treatments and monitoring are needed to eradicate Amur honeysuckle, making the cost, effort, and time requirements of controls important. 
Me preparing to basal bark honeysuckle and install signage, with coffee at hand.
Knowing the efforts we go through to manage honeysuckle, as well as the amount of conjecture surrounding the best practices, I worked with my advisor Dr. Nick Barber to study how effective basal bark treatments and prescribed fire are at controlling honeysuckle., I decided to study how effective basal bark treatments and prescribed fire are at controlling honeysuckle. Basal bark and fire are regularly-used control methods at Nachusa. Basal bark treatments involved spraying a 20% solution of triclopyr herbicide around each plant’s base from a backpack, which was both quick and easy. In this study I included 800 individually-marked Amur honeysuckle at 5 different sites within Nachusa Grasslands and Franklin Creek State Natural Area. Basal bark treatments were applied in fall 2017, winter 2018, early spring 2018, and late spring 2018 to see if the season of application affected the mortality of honeysuckle or the extent of damage to non-target flora. Prescribed fire was administered to half of each of the 5 sites in spring 2018. I then checked mortality in the early fall of 2018 to allow the honeysuckle time to either drop its leaves and regrow them (falsely dead) or to retain its leaves for an extended period of time before dying (falsely alive).
Here I am measuring, marking, and tagging individual honeysuckles.
I found that basal bark applications were equally effective at killing Amur honeysuckle, regardless of treatment timing. The combined mortality rate of herbicide treatments was 98.4% across all herbicide treatment seasons, compared to a 2.5% mortality with no basal bark treatment. Prescribed fire did not impact mortality positively or negatively.
This is 1 of 200 1m2 quadrats I placed to measure
off-target impacts of basal bark and fire treatments.
I also placed a 1m2 quadrat around 200 Amur honeysuckle to measure off-target damage to the plant community in spring 2018, finding a decrease of living cover equating to about a 10-inch radius. The off-target “ring of death” did not differ based on fire treatment or basal bark season.
I was lucky to receive a grant from the Friends of Nachusa Grasslands where I will be able to return in May 2019 to resample the off-target vegetation quadrats to evaluate how quickly the flora recover from the various treatments. 
In the fall I checked honeysuckle mortality, examining the
stems of all the honeysuckle for photosynthesizing leaves.
From my current results, I highly recommend using basal bark treatments to control Amur honeysuckle for all but the highest quality of areas. The speed and ease of use allow managers to cover large swaths of invaded areas across fall, winter, and spring seasons. The standing dead material from the honeysuckle can be reduced with a masticator or brush mower in the non-growing season or with regular prescribed fire, which should be implemented anyway.
Kaleb Baker is a Master's Candidate at Northern Illinois University, focused on natural areas management practices, and current Stewardship Committee Chair for Franklin Creek Conservation Association.
By Dr. Elizabeth Bach, Ecosystem Restoration Scientist  Photo by E. Bach December 5 is World Soil Day, a time to recognize the vital role soils play in our ecosystems and health: growing food, filtering water, recycling air, mitigating climate change, and supporting more than 25% of all biodiversity! Soil is the foundation of prairie restoration at Nachusa Grasslands, the starting point of a prairie planting. There are many questions about how soils impact prairie restoration success and how prairie restoration affects soils. Today, we highlight a few of the soil-focused scientific studies that have been conducted at Nachusa Grasslands:
Question: Do communities of soil critters like earthworms, ants, ground beetles, centipedes, millipedes, and spiders change during prairie restoration? Answers: Prairie restoration increases the number, abundance, and mass of soil critters like earthworms, ants, centipedes, and spiders with time since planting. Interestingly, different prairie remnants, even within the Nachusa preserve, have very different communities of soil invertebrates, and it’s difficult to know what a typical remnant invertebrate community may look like. Wodika & Baer 2015. If we build it, will they colonize? A test of the field of dreams paradigm with soil macroinvertebrate communities. Applied Soil Ecology 91:80-89 Wodika et al. 2014. Colonization and recovery of invertebrate ecosystem engineers during prairie restoration. Restoration Ecology 22: 456-464 Ground beetles show a different pattern, with high numbers of species and abundance in young plantings. Although older plantings had lower species richness, the roles those species play in the ecosystem diverged, indicating that older plantings support stable, diverse beetle communities that fill multiple roles in the ecosystem (e.g. different sizes, active at different parts of the day/night, eating different things). Barber et al. 2017. Species and functional trait re-assembly of ground beetle communities in restored grasslands. Biodiversity and Conservation 26:3481-3498 Question: Do soil microbial communities change during prairie restoration? Answer: Older restorations at Nachusa host microbial communities that are distinct from younger plantings, and that more closely resemble remnant communities. A couple of the key bacterial groups distinctive of prairie remnants and older restorations are Verrucomicrobia and Acidobacteria. The next question is to learn more about what those bacteria do! Barber et al. 2017. Soil microbial community composition in tallgrass prairie restorations converge with remnants across a 27-year chronosequence. Environmental Microbiology 19: 3118-3131 Question: How does plant diversity impact ecosystem functions like soil carbon and nitrogen cycling? Answer: Nachusa’s high plant diversity restorations had more roots, more microbial mass (especially mycorrhizal fungi), more structured soil, and less “leaky” nitrogen compounds that can wind up in water ways compared with low plant diversity restorations in the same area. This is the first study to show that very high plant diversity restoration can lead to improved ecosystem functioning. Klopf et al. 2017. Restoration and management for plant diversity enhances the rate of belowground ecosystem recovery. Ecological Applications 27:355-362 By Ryan Blackburn  Ryan Blackburn In the spring of 2013, I had little to no knowledge of tallgrass prairies or the various forms of life they held. I was an undergraduate at the time, and my class at Northern Illinois University had an opportunity to visit Nachusa Grasslands and receive a tour given by one of their dedicated stewards, Jay Stacy. As the class looked out across the beauty rolling over the tallgrass landscape, Jay directed our view downwards at our feet and started naming twenty or more plant species in just a little patch of dirt the size of a laptop. Jay also spoke of the rumors that bison may be coming to the landscape and how they were thought to have the ability to increase diversity of the prairie plant communities which already seemed teeming with life. This was the moment I realized that the tallgrass prairie and plant communities they held were something that I wanted to know more about. After a couple of growing seasons, a reintroduction of bison onto the landscape was accomplished, and my masters research was born.  Bison impacts on plant communities are apparent by the grazing lawns they leave behind Bison are large animals that require a lot of energy, which mainly comes from one family of plants, the grasses (Poaceae). Due to this selective grazing, bison create open space in their habitats for wildflowers to take root and increase the diversity of the tallgrass prairie overall. At least this is a summary of what had been observed in the research of remnant (never-plowed) prairies west of the Mississippi River which reintroduced bison as well. In hopes to recreate this tale of romance between bison and tallgrass prairies, Nachusa Grasslands reintroduced bison to their preserve of both remnant and restored lands. The question still remained: will their diet in this new area largely be made up of grasses, and how soon would we see changes in the plant communities following their reintroduction? To study this, I looked at both bison diet and differences of plant communities between sites with and without bison over a period of two years.  During the annual roundup a trained volunteer pulled the tail hair that was used in our study To figure out what the bison were eating, I used a technique called stable isotope analysis on bison tail hair pulled during the annual roundup. This allowed me to find signatures of plants within the bison hair and estimate these plants' abundance within bison diet. Better yet, I could cut bison hair into segments and look for seasonal changes. Through this analysis I was able to estimate major dietary groups of their diet between May 2016 and September 2016. I found that bison were doing what Nachusa brought them here to do: eat grasses (for the most part)! However, in late summer bison started to transition from largely grass species to wetland species and some wildflowers, something that had never been documented before. This was an unexpected shift that may lead to unforeseen consequences to wetlands, but further research is needed to speak to this.  Now that we know bison are mostly eating grasses during the growing season, we want to know how this might be impacting prairie plant communities. Attempting to answer this question, I, along with a team of dedicated plant enthusiasts, counted and measured percent cover of plant species across sites with and without bison. I quantified these communities in a variety of ways and compared them to see if bison were driving any differences between the two communities. Even though the bison had only been at Nachusa for three years, there were already evident changes happening within the plant communities. As predicted, areas with bison had more variation within their plant communities and had a higher ratio of native to non-native plants than those sites without bison. Further analysis shows that both variation and native to non-native ratios may be driven by bison preference of certain species such as bluegrasses (Poa compressa and Poa pretensis) suggested by a higher occurrence of these species in sites without bison.  The bison of Nachusa Grasslands were reintroduced to do a job: increase the diversity of plant communities. Though my research does not yet see an increase in diversity, it does suggest that bison are starting to go to work eating grasses and changing plant communities around them. Continued monitoring of these communities (especially those tasty wetland communities) is needed to gain a better understanding of bison impacts and how they progress in restored tallgrass prairies. Ryan Blackburn just received his M.S. degree studying bison diet and their role in the restoration of plant communities in tallgrass prairies. Ryan is also looking at grazing impacts on a landscape scale using drone aerial imagery. In 2016, he received a $1,500 Friends of Nachusa Grasslands Scientific Research Grant for his "Determining Bison Diet and Bison Effects on Vegetation in a Chronosequence of Restored Prairie at Nachusa" project.
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Blog CoordinatorDee Hudson
I am a nature photographer, a freelance graphic designer, and steward at Nachusa's Thelma Carpenter Prairie. I have taken photos for Nachusa since 2012. EditorJames Higby
I have been a high school French teacher, registered piano technician, and librarian. In retirement I am a volunteer historian at Lee County Historical and Genealogical Society. Categories
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