Native seed collection of plants with broad environmental tolerance to use for wildlife habitat restoration in the Great Basin

Restoration in the Great Basin is challenging, especially when trying to restore species that provide the highest habitat value. Many efforts to restore species important for wildlife habitat and rangeland productivity fail. However, in the Great Basin, there is also evidence that certain native plant species are very good at persisting through major environmental changes. For example, evidence from woodrat middens demonstrates that over the last 30,000 years, some species come and go as the climate warms and dries, some shift in elevation, but others maintain viable populations in the same locations, despite drastic changes in environmental conditions. Many of these species also have very broad geographic distributions today, growing both in the cold deserts of the Great Basin and the hot deserts of the Mojave. A relevant question for land management is, how do some native plant species achieve this broad tolerance, and can we use this information to select species and populations that will be excellent at establishing in disturbed environments? Identifying sources of seed with the best chance at establishing today, and persisting into the future will be an important contribution to maintaining high quality native plant habitat in our region. The Lab at University Nevada Reno (UNR) has developed a list of native grasses, forbs, and shrubs that are known to persist in our region over time and occupy a wide range of habitats, including the cold and hot deserts of western North America. Seeds of these species will be collected across the sagebrush steppe, through the sagebrush/Mojave transition zone, and into the Mojave Desert. Seeds will be used to conduct common garden experiments in these habitats, measuring emergence and survival. Additionally, populations will be compared in the greenhouse to quantify the mechanism behind the success of these highly tolerant native plants. These greenhouse experiments are important because if we can identify the characteristics that increase success in field environments, they can be used as criteria for selecting other species or populations with a higher probability of success in restoration. Because restoration activities are expensive, they should focus on the most likely-to-succeed species and populations. This research is designed to determine those characteristics for important native plant species that support the wildlife species in the Great Basin.