Tag Archives: grasslands

The Bench Strength of Prairies in the Face of Climate Change

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In case you hadn’t noticed, the climate is changing.  Things are getting weird, and they’re going to get weirder.  Here in central North America, we’re expecting more and more intense storm events and drought periods in the coming decades.  Scientists are scrambling to figure out how to predict and facilitate the inevitable changes those crazy weather events will bring to natural systems, including prairies.

Fortunately, prairies have been training for this for a very long time.  A few months ago, I wrote a post about the resilience of prairies, and how that resilience is built largely upon the diversity within their ecological communities and the size and connectivity of prairie habitats.  Prairies that are relatively big and still have the majority of their potential plant and animal species are going into this encounter with rapid climate change with what you might call solid bench strength.

Diversity of plants and animals is the keystone to ecological resilience. The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands, Illinois.

In sports, teams want to have lots of available players that represent a broad diversity of skills.  Each opponent they face will have its own individual mix of power, endurance, speed, and other attributes.  A successful team can build a roster for each game that counters their opponent’s strengths, no matter what they are.  The number and quality of their players is a team’s bench strength.

Healthy prairies have great bench strength too.  No matter what gets thrown at them, they can adapt by changing their roster of species.  The speed at which they can drastically change the makeup of their “team” is impressive.  Anyone who has spent many years watching the same prairie has seen this in action, but none of us have seen prairies go through what Professor John Weaver saw back in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Weaver, one of the best known prairie ecologists of all time, had been studying 30 “large typical prairies” across parts of Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Colorado prior to the start of the Dust Bowl era.  His baseline data gave him an invaluable opportunity to document the dramatic changes to the plant communities of those prairies during and after the droughts of the 1930’s.  What he recorded, along with his former student F.W. Albertson, was an incredible testimony to the dynamism and resilience of those prairies.  Their 88 page 1944 publication, entitled “Nature and Degree of Recovery of Grassland from the Great Drought of 1933 to 1940”  encapsulates the bulk of their findings in one place, and is worth a read if you have the time.

In 2012, we got a small glimpse of what Weaver and Albertson saw in the 1930’s, but our drought – while severe – only lasted one year here in Nebraska.

In 2013, the response of the prairie to the 2012 drought included some explosions of wildflowers, including shell leaf penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus).

One of the biggest plant community shifts Weaver and Albertson documented was the widespread and dramatic death of grasses such as big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and the subsequent rise of other grasses such as prairie dropseed (Sporobolous heterolepis), sand dropseed (Sporobolous cryptandrous), porcupine grass (Stipa spartea), and most of all, western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii).  Western wheatgrass populations exploded throughout the mid to late 1930’s, to the point where many prairies were completely dominated by it, to the near exclusion of other plant species. In fact, in a 1942 publication, Weaver said the following, “The large area of drought-damaged true prairie and native pasture now dominated by western wheat grass and the harmful effects of the successful competition for water of western wheat grass with species of greater forage value present a problem of much scientific interest and great economic importance.”

In other words, as they made massive substitutions within their lineups, prairies were changing so much they became almost unrecognizable, even to those who knew them best.  Weaver and Albertson watched waves of forb species they’d always considered to be of little value become stars on the field, and they and others didn’t quite know how to react.  Daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosus), Missouri goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis), and heath aster (Aster ericoides) were all examples of wildflowers that suddenly rose to prominence in new and major ways.  The two dismayed scientists described how heath aster, a “nearly worthless native forb,” formed near monocultures across wide swaths of prairie, to the extent that it “ruined many of the prairies…for the production of hay, because of its brush-like growth.”  Others were out of their depths on this too, and Weaver and Albertson reported that “considerable native sod was broken because of the seriousness of this pest.”  In the following sentence, however, they begrudgingly added a short sentence, “Of course, it did protect the soil.”

While Weaver and Albertson considered heath aster to be “nearly worthless” it plays an important role in the prairie, and is an important food source for pollinators in the fall.

Exactly.  While the strategy was foreign and frightening to those who hadn’t seen prairies dealing with these kinds of conditions before, those prairies were just doing what they’ve done many times before – making whatever roster adjustments were necessary to keep functioning at a high level.  In addition to forb species they denigrated as weeds, Weaver and Albertson noted that many wildflowers with “large storage organs”, including bulbs and corms, also greatly expanded their population size during the dust bowl years.  This included species like Violet wood-sorrel (Oxalis violaceae), bracted spiderwort (Tradescantia bracteata), windflower (Anemone caroliniana), and wild garlic (Allium canadense).  Those species and others increased the size of the patches they’d occurred in previously, but also were found “in many new locations.”  Other native forbs that became superabundant in some prairies, especially early in the dust bowl years, included prairie ragwort (Senecio plattensis), white sage (Artemisia ludoviciana), and yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Windflower (Anemone caroliniana) was one of the wildflowers with “large storage organs” that proliferated during the droughts of the 1930’s.

As rains started to return in the early 1940’s, Weaver and Albertson watched with amazement and renewed optimism as plant communities started “recovering”, which of course meant they were returning to a composition more familiar to the people observing them.  Grasses were often the first to rebound in prairies, including big bluestem, which initially formed large and lush monocultures in many places.  Wildflowers that hadn’t been seen for seven years or more, suddenly appeared everywhere, including blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium campestre), which grew “more thickly than if the stands of 7 normal years had been combined.”  Downy gentian (Gentiana puberula), which had been considered rare prior to the big droughts, became much more common in the early 1940’s than Weaver and Albertson had ever seen before, with abundances of “15 or more plants in a space of a few rods”.

Stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) returned fairly quickly to “normal abundance” by 1943, as did many others, including silverleaf scurfpea (Pediomelum argophyllum), cream wild indigo (Baptisia bracteata), and buffalo pea (Astragalus crassicarpus).  Prairie violets (Viola pedatifida), pussy toes (Antennaria neglecta),  and others came back more slowly, but returned nevertheless.  Importantly, those returning species didn’t appear to be traveling from long distances.  Instead, they simply re-emerged, either from seeds or underground buds, from where they’d been sitting on the metaphorical bench, awaiting the call to step up to the plate again.

Buffalo pea (Astragalus crassicarpus) and many other wildflowers recovered from the long droughts at a speed that amazed Weaver and Albertson.

The prairies we know today have been through a lot.  In Nebraska and surrounding states, we have specific documentation of the kinds of extreme roster changes prairies can and have made to adjust to the world around them, thanks to the work of John Weaver and F.W. Albertson.  If you have a favorite local prairie, and I hope you do, it’s important to remember that the way it has looked for as long as you’ve known it is only a small sample of what it’s capable of.  Smart teams don’t reveal their secrets before they need to.

As we work to keep prairies healthy through this period of rapid climate change, it’s both useful and reassuring to remember what they’ve been through before.  Today’s prairies certainly have additional challenges to deal with today, compared to the dust bowl days (more invasive species, more landscape fragmentation, etc.), but many should still have sufficient bench strength to make the adjustments they’ll need to make in the coming years.  Our responsibility is to provide management that helps prairies sustain their plant and animal diversity, as well as to protect prairies from additional conversion to cropland or other land uses.  Where possible, restoring prairie habitat around and between prairie fragments can also help build resilience.  In short, we have to allow prairies to do what they do best – adapt and adjust.  Prairies are wily veterans and they’ve been in this game for a long time.  It’s a good bet they’ve still got a few tricks up their sleeve.

Diversity, Redundancy, and Resilience

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Grasslands face a long list of challenges.  In many regions, habitat loss and fragmentation top that list, leaving prairies to struggle for survival as tiny isolated patches of habitat.  In addition, invasive plants and animals keep finding new footholds within both fragmented and unfragmented prairies.  Many of those invaders are aided by nutrient pollution – increasing levels of nitrogen, for example, which help species like reed canarygrass and smooth brome monopolize formerly diverse plant communities.  Most of all, the climate continues to flail crazily about, ratcheting up the temperature and tossing out more and more extreme weather events.

How can grasslands possibly survive all of that?

I’m actually pretty optimistic about the future of prairies.  Prairies are inherently resilient, and if we do our jobs as land managers and supporters of conservation, we can help ensure their continued resilience and survival.  Resilience in prairies and other ecosystems is the capacity to absorb and adapt to whatever challenges are thrown at them, while sustaining their essential functions and processes.  That resilience is built largely upon two pillars: biological diversity and the size/connectivity of the habitats that biological diversity depends upon.

Plant diversity is a key component of ecological resilience, along with the other biological diversity associated with it.  Taberville Prairie, Missouri.

We’ve severely compromised the “habitat size/connectivity” pillar in many regions of North America, but even in little prairie fragments, there is an incredible diversity of organisms, providing the countless services needed to sustain life and productivity.  In a healthy and diverse prairie, not only are all the bases covered, there is considerable redundancy built in to the system because of the number of different species present.  If one plant, animal, or microbe is unable to do its job because of drought, fire, predation or disease, another can step up and fill the role. Diversity provides redundancy, and redundancy helps ensure that prairie systems stay healthy and productive, regardless of circumstances.

It’s not hard to find examples of this kind of built-in redundancy in prairies.  In fact, you can find it within some very recognizable groups of species.  Let’s start with sunflowers.

While most people know what a sunflower looks like, you might not realize how many different kinds there are.  Here in Nebraska, we have at least nine different sunflower species, plus a lot of other flower species that look and act much like sunflowers.  Two of our official sunflowers are annuals, often classified as weeds because of their ability to quickly colonize areas of bare or disturbed soil.  The other seven species are long-lived perennials, each with its own set of preferred habitat conditions.

Plains sunflower, an annual, is a rapid colonizer of exposed in sandy prairies around Nebraska. The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve.

All sunflowers are tremendously important providers of food and shelter to wildlife and invertebrates.  There’s a reason sunflower seeds are so prevalent in bird feeders – they pack an enormous amount of nutrition into a little package.  Because of that, a wide array of both vertebrate and invertebrate animals feed eagerly on sunflower seeds when they can find them.  Sunflowers also produce an abundance of pollen and nectar, and make it very accessible to pollinators and many other creatures by laying it out on a big open platter.  It’s rare to find a sunflower in full bloom that doesn’t have at least one little creature feeding on its nectar, pollen, or both.  Grazing animals can get a lot from sunflowers as well; the forage quality of sunflowers is very high, especially before they bloom.

During or after droughts, intensive grazing bouts, fires or other events that leave bare soil exposed, annual sunflowers thrive, and they can provide abundant resources at a time when many other plant species can’t.  We see this often in the Nebraska Sandhills, where plains sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris) turns the hills yellow during the summer after a spring fire or the year after a big drought.  Plains sunflower isn’t the only plant that flourishes under those conditions, but its presence in plant communities is a great example of the kind of built in redundancy that helps ensure there are plants for animals to eat, even when many normally-abundant prairie plants are scarce or weakened.

Nebraska’s perennial sunflowers span a wide range of habitats, from wet to dry and sunny to shady.  You can find a sunflower in just about any habitat type in Nebraska.  That’s another great example of built-in redundancy, and a reason for optimism about the future.  As climate change alters the growing conditions across much of Nebraska, it seems unlikely that any habitat will change so dramatically that it will become devoid of sunflowers.  Instead we’ll probably see changes in the relative abundance of each species from place to place.  In addition, remember that what we call a sunflower is a fairly arbitrary categorization; there are lots of other wildflowers that provide very similar resources/services, including plants like rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium), false sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides), sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), and many more.  Those sunflowerish plants also span a wide range of habitat preferences and growth strategies, making it likely that some of them will be blooming abundantly every year, no matter what drought, fire, or grazing conditions are thrown at them.

An illustration of the general habitat preferences of several perennial sunflowers found in Nebraska.  The variety among habitats used by these species makes it likely that some kind of perennial sunflower will persist in most locations, regardless of how climate and disturbance patterns change over time.

Milkweeds are another group of organisms that demonstrate the diversity and redundancy in prairie ecosystems.  There are 17 milkweed species here in Nebraska, along with several other related species (like dogbane) that produce the same kind of sticky white latex.  While that latex is toxic to most creatures, a number of invertebrates have figured out how to feed on milkweed plants without suffering harmful effects.  Many have actually turned the toxin into an advantage by ingesting the substance and making themselves toxic to potential predators.  The most famous of these critters, of course, is the monarch butterfly, which uses milkweeds as larval hosts.

A selection of milkweed species found in Nebraska, demonstrating the variety in flower colors and shapes among the group.

When you picture a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed plant, you probably envision a tall plant with a big pink flower.  In reality, monarchs can use many (maybe all?) milkweed species as larval hosts.  Because each species of milkweed has its own unique set of preferred habitat and growing conditions, the diversity of milkweed species in Nebraska should help monarchs find a place to lay eggs regardless of weather, disease outbreaks, or other events.

The spring of 2017 provided a compelling example of this.  In most years, monarchs overwintering in Mexico fly into the southern United States and lay eggs on milkweed plants there.  The subsequent generation than flies northward into Nebraska and other  nearby states.  For some reason, many monarchs broke from that pattern in 2017, and arrived in Nebraska much earlier than normal.  This caused a great deal of concern because the milkweed most commonly used for egg laying – common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) wasn’t up yet, and just as it started emerging, a freeze knocked it back down.  Fortunately, common milkweed wasn’t the only option available to monarchs.  Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) is also fairly common, starts growing earlier in the year than common milkweed, and is more resistant to cold weather.  Monarchs seemed happy to lay their eggs on the skinny leaves of whorled milkweed, and those of us worried about monarchs breathed a sigh of relief.  Once again, diversity created redundancy, and monarchs found habitat for their babies, even though they arrived well ahead of schedule.

A monarch egg and caterpillar on whorled milkweed earlier this spring (April 27, 2017) in Nebraska.

A broader example of redundancy and resilience in prairies includes the interdependence between bees and plants.  If you’ve followed this blog for long, you’re surely aware that there are thousands of bee species in North America, and potentially 80-100 or more species in a single prairie.  Most of those bees can feed on the pollen and nectar from many kinds of wildflowers, though some are restricted by their size or tongue length from accessing certain species. Because most plants only bloom for a few weeks, and most bees need considerably longer than that to successfully raise a family, bees require more than one kind of wildflower near their nest.  In fact, in order to support a broad diversity of bee species, a prairie needs an equally diverse set of wildflower species.  That way, a bee can find sufficient food throughout the growing season, even if drought, grazing, or other events keep some plant species from blooming in a particular year.

On the flip side, most wildflowers rely on the diversity of bees and other pollinators to ensure successful pollination.  While some insect-pollinated plants are very selective about who they let in, most rely on the availability of many potential pollinators.  If some species of bees are suffering from a disease, or have a weather-related population crash, it’s awfully nice to know that there are other bees (along with butterflies, moths, wasps, and other insects) that will still be able to transfer pollen from one flower to another.  A diverse pollinator community relies on a diverse wildflower community, and vice versa.  Diversity, redundancy, and resilience.  No matter what happens, flowers make fruits and seeds – which, by the way, is pretty important all the various creatures that rely on those fruits and seeds for food.

Bees rely on plant diversity to ensure a consistent supply of pollen and nectar across the growing season. In this case, tall thistle, an important native wildflower, is supplying food to a bee in return for pollination services.

All of us have our favorite prairie species, whether we’re fans of flowers, butterflies, birds, or some other group of organisms.  It’s easy to focus our attention on those favorite species, and worry about whether they will survive all the challenges that face prairies today.  If we really care about prairies, however, we should probably focus more on (and celebrate) the richness of species that keep prairies humming along, no matter what gets thrown at them.  The variety of yellow-flowered sunflowerish plants, the broad array of latex-producing milkweed-like plants, the complexity of the plant-pollinator relationship, and countless other examples of diversity and redundancy help ensure the survival of prairies well into the future.  That resilience is why I remain optimistic about the future of prairies.