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Landscape Impacts and Methods for Dealing with Them

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• Disturbance• Invasives• Process change• Low-nutrient soil or loss

of topsoil• Salinity• Aridity• Fragmentation• Loss of neighborhood• Soil toxicity

• Shallow overburden• Impaired primary

processes• Herbivory• Human use• Reduced biodiversity• Reduced habitat• Marine shading• Disturbance in low-

productivity ecosystems

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Landscape Impact: Disturbance

• Restoration Methods– Invasive removal– Revegetation– Possibly soil or substrate replenishment– Temporary or permanent structural additions

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Landscape Impact: Invasives

• Restoration Methods– Herbicides– Mechanical removal– Life-form shift– Shading– Soil removal

6Cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica)

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Landscape Impact: Process change

• Methods to deal with changed fire regime– Too much fire

• Firebreaks, green strips• Remove flammable vegetation, plant other veg

– Not enough fire• Remove woody vegetation• Encourage grass• Prescribed burns

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Landscape Impact: Process change

• Methods to deal w/ changed flood regime– Flooding becomes less common

• Schedule water releases• Plant more drought-adapted vegetation• Remove levees• Excavate, or dike to create storage• Pipe water in• Plug or fill drains

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Landscape Impact: Process change

• Methods to deal w/ changed flood regime– Flooding more frequent

• Plant flood adapted species• Build mounds• Plant energy-absorbing or clonal species• Use LWD to deflect water energy• Put water onto flood plain• Increase system water storage

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Landscape impact: low nutrient soil

• Methods– Add organic material

• Add directly• Add by establishing plants

– Plant tolerant plants (often early succesional)– Plant nitrogen fixers– Use organic mulch– You may add nutrients to kick-start cycling in

severely distressed systems like mine spoil

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Landscape Impact: Salinity

• Methods– Plant salt-tolerant species– Cease irrigation– Create micro-topography, plant in less salty

zones, add OM– In some environments, salt tolerant trees will

lower brackish water table so that surface is less salty.

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Landscape Impacts: Dry Conditions

• Plant adapted species• Sow seed• Apply thick layer of organic mulch• Kill herbaceous weeds• Collect water with gouging, imprinting• Plant in wetter microsites, in shade, next

to logs or rocks• Create a shaded microhabitat

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20Imprinting

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Landscape Impacts: Fragmentation

• Methods– Create connections– Stepping stones– Make matrix more similar to native parcels– Create buffers– Consolidate fragmented plots– In agricultural lands, use wildlife-friendly

farming practices

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Landscape Impacts: Loss of native plants in the neighboring environment

• Methods– Create projects physically closer to intact native

systems– Group restored parcels to give them a greater

consolidated impact– Stepping stones– Treat large parcels as keystone sites and build out– Use geometry– Use Bradley Method™ and Robin Hood-in-Reverse™

Method– Attract animal dispersers

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Landscape Impact: Soil Toxicity

• Methods– Raise pH in acid soils by liming (decreases

availability and mobility of toxic elements).– Lower pH in basic soils by adding sulfur– Plant tolerant species– Plant grasses and develop soil OM to buffer

toxic substances– Encourage production and soil fauna activity

to break down hydrocarbons

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Acid coal mine runoff

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Landscape Impacts: Shallow Overburden

• Methods:– Plant species like grasses that are productive

but can senesce and not die when seasonal water supply runs out

– Use mulch– Plant materials with shallow, dendritic root

systems– Consider shrubby species rather than trees– Contour: mounds or filled depressions

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Landfill

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Landscape Impacts: Impaired Primary Processes

• Primary processes: acquisition and storage of water, nutrients, soil

• Methods– Repair erosion and stabilize site– Plant adapted colonizer species– Plant in clumps – Use logs, boulders, depressions to collect

resources– Encourage development of pools of OM

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Landscape Impacts: Herbivory

• Methods– Domestic grazing

• Lower stocking rates• Fence stream corridors• Provide alternate water sources

– Wild animals• Fencing• Chemical deterrents• Siting of projects

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Landscape Impacts: Human Use

• Methods– Interpretation and signage– Education, volunteer groups– Fencing– Patrolling– Project siting– Defensive planting

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Landscape Impacts: Reduced Plant Biodiversity

• Methods– Removal of non-natives– In-planting– Gap creation– Preserving or planting seed plants– For wetlands, creation of multiple sites

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Landscape Impacts: Reduced Habitat

• Methods– Plant to increase vegetation diversity– Install or create wildlife features– In wetlands, create multiple sites– Plant different food sources with different food

delivery timing– Create structural variation (trees adjacent to

grassland, water sources)

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Landscape Impacts: Marine shading

• Shading can be caused by structures, sediment, nutrients or increased depth.

• Methods (eelgrass)– Eliminate or avoid shading

• Structures may be modified– Transplant salvaged plants– Clear obstructed marine bed– Harvest fertile fronds and place into seed

buoys

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Clinton Ferry Terminal

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Landscape Impacts: Disturbance in Very Low Productivity or Stressful Sites

• Methods– Removal of disturbance source– Creation of more mesic micro-site conditions– Use of small container plants, hardened off, or seeds– Plants should be local genotype– Hit narrow time window for best planting– Mulch, fiber mats– Grasses are good colonizers, sedges in cold climates

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