Adaptive Meadow Restoration Methods in Mount Rainier National Park
Project ID: P21AC11082
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Partner Institution: University of Washington
Fiscal Year: 2021
Initial Funding: $15,697
Total Funding: $15,697
Project Type: Research
Project Disciplines: Biological
National Park: Mount Rainier National Park
Principal Investigator: Bakker, Jonathan
Agreement Technical Representative: Lofgren, Rebecca
Abstract:
This project will provide adaptive management planning for testing best methods of restoration effectiveness in the highly-visited meadows of MORA. These meadows are a primary way for millions of visitors to experience Cascade meadow systems each year and are a critical component of the Mount Rainier National Historic Landmark District. The park and its partners invest heavily in restoring undesired bare ground areas and educating visitors about public stewardship of the meadows. Restoration work in the meadows is an important way the community has been involved in the work at Mount Rainier and successful restoration projects can be lasting connection to the park and place for those involved in the work. The results of this project will be used to implement methods testing, collect data on technique effectiveness and iteratively refine methods. This work will provide a foundation for evidence-based restoration in Mount Rainier’s montane meadows in the Anthropocene.
A. Performance Goals – This project will develop a design for adaptively testing restoration methods in the Paradise Meadows of Mount Rainier National Park (MORA) to facilitate more successful restoration. MORA conserves a ring of subalpine and alpine meadows surrounding the mountain. In the post-colonial era, visitors to Paradise Meadows, on the southern slopes of the mountain, have trampled meadows and led to significant areas of undesired bare ground and a fragmented meadow system. The park has invested significant resources in documenting impacts (Edwards 1979, Rochefort 1989), stabilizing eroded soils, and revegetating disturbed areas. A high and sustained number of visitors and seasonality changes that result in earlier snowmelt leave the meadows more vulnerable to trampling in the early seasons (Fritzke 1992, NPS data). Climate shifts may also disrupt long established processes of reproduction and recruitment and survival, reducing the effectiveness of passive restoration of meadow areas once visitors are excluded (Theobald et al. 2017). Bare ground areas in the meadows not only fragment the meadow ecosystem and detract from the experience of visiting a subalpine and alpine meadow system but leave the area vulnerable to invasive weeds establishment and further departure from desired conditions.
Updating restoration techniques to include methods that are successful in the current conditions in Paradise Meadows is important to long-lasting restoration efforts that are resilient to future change. Past restoration methods testing included at least anecdotal tests of direct seeding and planting density. Current plantings include using clumps of seedlings (grown from locally collected seed in the park greenhouse) rather than seed, because of low success in previous direct seeding efforts. However, these efforts have not been critically evaluated for long-term success under current conditions. Given that co-existing meadow species have different functional traits, growth rates, and responses to transplanting and that many restoration techniques are increasingly taking into account ecological concepts like complementarity and facilitation, developing a thorough framework for testing best techniques is critical for long-term success. The complexity of restoration and the many variables that could influence site success create the need for adaptive management planning, where successive methods are tested using iterative feedbacks between methods and results, with the goal of continually refining best practices (Bakker et al. 2018).
This agreement provides expert protocol and data collection design work to develop an adaptive plan for testing montane meadow restoration methods that can be implemented and evaluated by park staff. In the next two years, Mount Rainier will work to revegetate and restore 3,000 square meters of meadow (1,400 square meters in 2021 using 40,000 native plant seedlings). Project goals are to develop methods to test different restoration techniques at Paradise, starting in these project areas, that will lead to naturalized restoration to restore ecosystem function, exclude invasive plants, and deter further impacts.