Recipient Organization
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
ITHACA,NY 14853
Performing Department
Natural Resources
Non Technical Summary
With numerous entry ports and extensive agriculture, forests, and waterbodies, New York State is particularly vulnerable to biological invasions and impacts they cause. Developing effective control methods requires research, yet decades of work by scientists and managers seeking solutions to invasive species problems continue to be plagued by (1) lack of understanding of invasive species impacts, and (2) lack of appropriate protocols to assess impacts. Furthermore, managers rarely assess impacts of management implemented to reduce negative effects of introduced species. This dilemma is created by a gap between knowledge and practice, where knowledge generated by research is difficult to translate into practice. Management is usually planned and conducted without goals of gaining knowledge from management practices. We consider the role of academia to deliver scientifically sound and standardized assessment protocols which, after field testing, can be utilized by land managers. Developing and implementing scientifically guided protocols to better assess invasive species management is a sorely needed. Ever increasing amounts of societal resources are invested to reduce negative impacts, yet we rarely receive evidence to understand whether management improves conditions for species, ecosystems or processes we aim to protect. The typical metric of how many hectares were treated or invasive species removed are invalid. Our protocols will not only contribute toinvasive species knowledge, but improve decision making and practice of invasive species management.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
60%
Applied
30%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
Non-indigenous species, particularly many invasive plants that reach high local and regional abundance, are considered major ecological and agricultural problems (Mack et al., 2000) taxing the nations financial and intellectual resources. With numerous entry ports and extensive agriculture, forests, and water bodies, New York State is particularly vulnerable to biological invasions and impacts they may cause. However, whether these plant species are always the main drivers of environmental degradation is contested (MacDougall and Turkington, 2005; Davis et al., 2011) questioning the wisdom of the ever increasing expenditures. For example, invasion success of some introduced plants is linked to introduced earthworms (Nuzzo et al., 2009) and high native or introduced ungulate (deer, sheep, bovid) populations (Kalisz et al., 2014), both of which have distinct ecosystem impacts (Bohlen et al., 2004; Côté et al., 2004). Annual herbicide expenditures for a single wetland invader, Phragmites australis, exceed $4 million (pre 2009 data) with little or no long-term benefit as self-reported by managers (Martin and Blossey, 2013). Despite these sobering assessments, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) alone has provided >$20 million since 2011 for continued P. australis herbicide treatments (https://www.glri.us//projects/index.html).Developing effective control methods requires research, yet decades of work by scientists and managers seeking solutions to invasive species problems continue to be plagued by (1) lack of understanding of invasive species impacts, and (2) lack of appropriate protocols to assess impacts. Furthermore, managers rarely assess impacts of management implemented to reduce negative effects of introduced species. Case in point are the GLRI P. australis projects. Unfortunately, there is no required follow-up to evaluate whether treatments made life better for the species considered under threat by P. australis invasion. Evidence from one of our collaborators in the Adirondack PRISM (Quirion et al., MS in preparation), suggests that while P. australis populations can be suppressed with annual herbicide treatments, eradication is only possible when extremely small populations (10x10 m or less) are targeted. Any benefits to native species and unwarranted potential side effects of continual herbicide application are entirely unknown as only anecdotal observations are typically collected. The lack of assessments of ecological outcomes of control efforts is not just a problem in P. australis management, but it has plagued invasive species management since its inception (Blossey, 1999; Downey, 2011).Ever increasing amounts of societal resources are invested to reduce negative impacts of invasive plants, yet we rarely receive evidence to understand whether management improves conditions for species, ecosystems or processes we aim to protect. The typical metrics of how many hectares were treated or the numbers of individuals of an invasive species removed are invalid. This dilemma is created by a gap between knowledge and practice, where knowledge generated by research is difficult to translate into practice (Fabricius and Cundill, 2014). Furthermore, the selected management techniques may not be able to successfully achieve the desired ecological outcomes, but that is rarely assessed. In addition, management is usually planned and conducted without goals of gaining knowledge from management practices.We consider the role of academia to deliver scientifically sound and standardized assessment protocols, which - after field-testing - can be utilized by land managers. Developing and implementing scientifically guided protocols to better assess invasive species management is sorely needed but academics have not embraced this social responsibility (Fabricius and Cundill, 2014) and left it to the managers to design and conduct assessments. Managers have often rejected the need for assessments for financial and time constraints, but that appears more a function of institutional cultures (Smith, 2011), as well as the lack of scientific expertise by those charged with implementing control efforts. Our proposed work program and direct engagement (for example through a structured decision making process funded through the NY Invasive Species Research Institute) with managers will not only contribute to invasive species knowledge, but improve decision making and practice of invasive species management.Our work program touches aspects of nearly all important articulated extension and research priorities for NYS (http://www2.cce.cornell.edu/plans/Pages/FY-2016-CCE-Programmatic-Plans.aspx) with the exception of 4.0 Nutrition, Food Safety and Security and 5.0 4-H. But even these two programs, particularly food security and 4-H can overlap with our work if invasive species threats are removed so forest stewardship and agro-forestry can be developed/maintained and with 4-H involved in local stewardship, such as management of invasive plants through physical removal and restoration. But most formidable, our work program overlaps with goals articulated in the remaining priorities such as Agriculture and Food Systems (increase the use of sustainable practices to result in improved or protected soil, air and water quality and production of high quality and safe food and fiber), Climate Change (management of invasive species using IPM or otherwise), Environment and Natural Resources (natural resource conservation as a general theme), and Community and Economic Vitality. Our program aims to grow and develop "community leadership capacity so that community residents experience high quality of life, ecological integrity, effective decision making". With this leadership in place communities should be enable to better actively manage their human and environmental assets.
Project Methods
Objective 1: Negative impacts of invasive plants are often measured in response to removal of invaders. However, this approach does not account for associated confounding factors, (vegetation differences, legacy effects, and interactions with deer, earthworms, and other invasive species). We will use transplants of native plant species (sentinels) with conservation relevance to assess invasive plant impacts. Only if species can be made readily available do they have utility for the managers. We have adopted such an approachsuccessfully to assess deer impacts using red oak sentinels. The sentinel approach allows rapid impact assessments. Furthermore, the method does not require specialized botanical knowledge facilitating adoption by land managers. Specimens are individually numbered and will be revisitedat regular intervals.We identified 3 target invasive plants: Alliaria petiolata (garlic mustard), Cynanchum rossicum (pale swallow-wort) and Fallopia bohemica (Bohemian knotweed; this hybrid of F. japonica and F. sacchalinensis is the most widespread form of a complex known as Japanese knotweeds in our region (unoublished data). All three plant species are present throughout the Finger Lakes region and are commonly targeted for control.For A. petiolata and C. rossicum we will select 10 invaded sites per plant species. Within each site we will select 2 study areas, a control and an area where management will occur. We will focus on invasions occurring in forested areas or along edges between open fields and forests. Both species are removed through mechanical methods (pulling for A. petiolata and digging for C. rossicum). We will partner with local management agencies to coordinate plant removal efforts. Removal will occur annually for the duration of the study.White-tailed deerbenefitinvasive plant species, including A. petiolata (Knight et al., 2009; Kalisz et al., 2014; Davalos et al., 2015). Therefore, proper assessments of invasive species impacts requires untangling single and combined effects. We will evaluate deer impacts by dividing each study area into two plots: one open where deer have access and one fenced plot where deer are excluded. We will follow a split-plot design where each site is divided into two management areas (control and removal) and each area into two deer access treatments (open and fenced, each anticipated to be 10x10m but this may vary according to local conditions), for a total of four study plots per site.Non-native earthworms are often correlated with invasive plants (Nuzzo et al. 2009) and white-tailed deer presence (Davalos et al. 2015). Furthermore, earthworms have significant effects on plant communities (Frelich et al., 2006; Dobson and Blossey, 2015). To avoid confounding effects of site conditions we will only select sites where earthworms are present. At least for A. petiolata, it appears earthworm invasions occur first and A. petiolata is taking advantage of soil conditions created by earthworms (Nuzzo et al. 2009). We will determine earthworm presence through earthworm extraction with the mustard method (Lawrence and Bowers, 2002) and observation of earthworms casts. We will transplant multiple seedlings (N=20) of sentinel plant species at each plot and monitor their survival, growth and reproductive output throughout the duration of the study (N=800 sentinels per species; 20 sentinels per plot x 4 plots per site x 10 sites). We will make an initial selection of species based on desiredplant communities land managers like to achieve. From this list, we will select 3-5 sentinel species based on their occurrence in the target habitat, species life history (annual vs. perennial), life form (graminoid, forb, woody, etc.), deer preference and ease to propagate or purchase seedlings. Growth and reproductive measurements may include stem height, leaf number, leaf width or length, flower or fruit number. Selected measurements will vary among sentinel species depending on growth habits. We will evaluate single and combined effect of each factor (invasive species removal and deer exclusion) via linear mixed models where site and area within site will be included as random factors.We will evaluate benefits of F. bohemica management (herbicide application; both stem and foliar application) for native vegetation using the sentinel approach as described above (sentinel species may differ among sites based on articulated desired plant communities by land managers) . We will conduct the study at a network of sites managed by Cornell Plantations and other local land owners. The sites differ in area covered by F. bohemica, years of treatment, vegetation community, and current status of invasion, allowing us to also evaluate temporal and spatial effects. For example we will be able to address the question whether potential negative effects of herbicide application linger or dissipate over time.Objective 2: To overcome gaps between invasive species research and practice, we seek to couple knowledge generation and management. Once the protocol described in Objective 1 is field tested, we will work with land managers to develop a learning process and decision framework for invasive species management. We will have set the stage for this process through an independently funded project that will use structured decision-making processes with NY PRISM leaders. We will utilize the outcome or intermittent results of this multi-year process to further develop our own approach. Based on "action learning theory", we will cultivate collaboration between researchers and managers in an "action learning cycle". The cycle includes: Planning (setting invasive species management objectives and selecting the appropriate control method to reach those objectives, i.e structured decision making framework), Action (implementing control strategy), Evaluating (assessing results), and Reflecting (identifying successes and ways to improve). While the essential components of this approach resemble 'adaptive management', we deliberately call it "action learning" as we are seeking scientist-manager collaboration and local knowledge generation and learning as a main outcome. Adaptive management, in practice, has often failed the complete the ideal iterative process due to a lack of true collaborative efforts and development and implementation of assessments.Managers typically only do the first two steps (planning and action), therefore failing to gain local information about invasive species impacts and management success that come from steps three and four (evaluating and reflecting) (Armitage et al., 2009; Fabricius and Cundill, 2014). Likewise, researchers testing invasive species control strategies infrequently report on whether native plant populations reestablish and seldom monitor post treatment success over appropriate timeframes or scales (Kettenring and Adams, 2011)We will start to employ decision-making processes to clearly set management objectives and weigh the cost- benefits of management options to meet those objectives using tools including SDM (Gregory et al., 2012) and the Invasive Plant Management Decision Analysis Tool (Zimmerman et al., 2011)i. This will be a collaborative effort guided by SDM specialists and involve scientists and our partners in NY PRISMS.Through this partnership, we will build a framework of collaboration where managers and researchers jointly define objectives and use scientifically valid metrics to measure impacts and outcomes of management at real management scales and within appropriate timeframes. The framework will include (1) a process to articulate attainable management objectives and appropriate metrics to measure success (largely defined through the SDM process, (2) a technical approach to plan management activities such that scientifically sound data can be collected and (3) analysis, reflection and communication of results.