AUTHORS: Chris Newbold, Missouri Department of Conservation
ABSTRACT: The Missouri Department of Conservation conducted a 700 + acre prairie reconstruction project at Prairie Fork Conservation Area in east-central Missouri from 2004-2019. This long-term reconstruction project provided an opportunity to use a chronosequence approach to assess the success of two reconstruction methods in emulating local, reference remnant prairie plant communities. We compared broadcast dormant seeding following two types of site preparation, agricultural cropping (Crop) or herbicide control in existing grass assemblages (Grass), and remnant communities. The Crop site preparation method resulted in a rapid increase in richness shortly following seeding. Although more similar to remnant assemblages initially, the Grass method took longer for mean coefficient of conservatism and floristic quality index to approach conditions of the reference communities. However, neither method resulted in plant community compositions that converged with the reference through time. Further, indicator species analysis identified a diverse assemblage of species lacking from the reconstructed prairies. This information is important for land managers in the development of adaptive management strategies during active reconstruction. We also provide some ‘lessons learned’ over the course of the 15-year reconstruction project that could be useful to other prairie managers.
