Humulus lupulus L.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/19906/thumbnail.jp

Humulus lupulus L.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/19906/thumbnail.jp

Conservation of the Illinois flora: A climate change vulnerability assessment of 73 plant species

It will be important for land managers, ecological researchers and policymakers to understand how predicted climate changes may affect the flora of Illinois. A climate change vulnerability assessment was completed in 2011 for the162 Animal Species in Greatest Need of Conservation using NatureServe’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) tool. Here we selected 73plant species found in Illinois and calculated their relative vulnerabilities to predicted climate changes, also using the NatureServe CCVI tool. We selected species from several groups that we felt would be broadly representative of the Illinois flora. These groups included: rare plants, invasive plants, important prairie species, important woodland/savanna species, important forest species, and plants important to society. We compiled and entered data regarding both the species’ exposures to predicted climate changes and their sensitivities to those changes. Exposures were determined by overlapping species range maps for Illinois with maps of temperature and moisture (AET:PET) predictions for the middle of this century. Species sensitivities were determined by interviewing between 4 and 12 experts for each plant species. Experts answered questions found in the CCVI tool regarding the species’ biologies, ecologies and behaviors. Results for each individual survey were averaged for each species. Results fell into one of five vulnerability categories: Extremely Vulnerable, Highly Vulnerable, Moderately Vulnerable, Not Vulnerable/Presumed Stable, and Not Vulnerable/Increase Likely. Results for these 73species in Illinois fell into all 5 vulnerability categories, with the majority (67%) falling into the Presumed Stable category. The species most vulnerable to predicted climate changes were all of conservation concern; most were federal or state listed species. Native species tended to be more vulnerable than non-natives, and plants important to prairies, savannas and forests were equally vulnerable to predicted changes. The four species were ranked as likely to increase in population size or range extent due to predicted climate changes were: Ailanthus altissima(tree of heaven), Ambrosia artemisiifolia(ragweed), Microstegium vimineum(Japanese stiltgrass) and Toxicodendron radicans(poison ivy). We advocate for 8 important next-steps to ensure adequate conservation of Illinois plants in a future with climate change, based on the findings of this report: 1) Investigate the climate change vulnerabilities of all rare plants in Illinois. Rare plants are the most vulnerable group of species in this report. 2) Prioritize research on plants’ abilities to phenologically track changes in seasonality, population genetics, species interactions, dispersal distances, thermal and hydrological tolerancesand soil preferences/tolerances. 3) Continue to monitor population trends. Increase capacity to monitor species with the most uncertain responses to climate changes, the most vulnerable species, and all rare species. 4) Monitor invasive speciesfor changes in populations and behavior. Assess all invasive species using NatureServe’s CCVI tool or another tool. 5) Increase connectivity between natural areas. Increase acreage of natural areas. 6) Managers, policymakers, researchers and the public shouldwork together to fully consider the role that assisted migration should or should not play in Illinois plant conservation. 7) Compile work done by various agencies and NGOs on the climate change vulnerabilities of Illinois species and ecosystems to detect trends, and to identify appropriate research, management and policy priorities. 8) Use adaptive management approaches to care for natural areas in Illinois in order to best achieve land management goals in an uncertain future.Illinois Natural History SurveyIllinois Department of Natural ResourcesIllinois Department of Transportationunpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

Forest Conservation and Management

Forests in our agricultural or urbanized landscapes are especially vulnerable to degradation. Since 1997, the CTAP biological monitoring program has systematically studied Illinois’ forests. This brochure summarizes the best science and data available regarding four major aspects of forest conservation and management. The last pages provide management recommendations.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

An examination of temporal trends, regional variation, and habitat-type differences in site-level Floristic Quality, and their implications for the use of Floristic Quality Assessment

Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a measure of site conservation value. It is premised on using an area’s plant species composition and diversity to estimate its human disturbance and degradation levels. FQA metrics are increasingly popular and influential for making land conservation, restoration, and policy decisions, as well as for scientific research. While it has been demonstrated that FQA metrics accurately measure site degradation/disturbance levels, many other FQA metric properties are unknown, especially compared to other ecological metrics. For this research, I assessed three important properties of FQA measures that are not understood: their regional patterns, their variation among different habitat-types, and their trends over time. I used site-level vegetation data from an Illinois statewide habitat monitoring program (Critical Trends Assessment Program, CTAP) to characterize FQA metric properties across regions and habitat-types. I found that forests had higher Floristic Quality values on average than wetlands. However, a separate analysis of a select group of the state’s most pristine habitats showed that the upper-range of forest Floristic Quality was equal to, or lower than, that of other habitat types. Therefore, the difference between wetlands and forests observed statewide was due to the greater relative abundance of highly degraded wetlands across the state. Across the state, Floristic Quality decreased with latitude overall, although the variation explained was not great. This relationship was stronger for forests, than wetlands, which showed a weak, quadratic latitudinal relationship. Forests were the only habitat that varied in richness, exhibiting a weak decline to the north. Temporal Floristic Quality trends were compared using a 50-year, old-field succession study. Values in all fields followed the same asymptotic pattern, reaching a peak after around 35-years. The consistency of FQA values over time show that when sites of different ages are compared with one another, an asymptotic trend in metric values should be considered the default trend that is likely over early- to mid-successional timeframes. In summary, these studies found FQA value differences among regions and habitat-types. However, there was little evidence that these differences reflect an inherent property to FQA values such that they would confound general use of these metrics. Instead, variation in Floristic Quality across habitat-types and regions was either found to be very small, or it was probably a reflection of human degradation levels across sites. Nonetheless, users must consider that some variation in FQA values could be attributable to the natural ecological characteristics of regions or habitat-types (i.e., not all variation in values was attributable to anthropogenic degradation/disturbance), and depending on users’ goals, variation may need to be accounted for. Specifically, these results highlight that site comparisons across very large latitudinal gradients, or ones that compare certain specific habitat-types with one another (e.g., upland versus floodplain forest), or ones where only very high-quality, pristine habitats are being compared, are the instances where FQA score comparisons should be done the most cautiously

Vascular flora of the Pembroke Savannas, Kankakee County, Illinois

Project completion report, field work completed April 2002 to November 2002INHS Technical Report prepared for Illinois Department of Natural Resource

Endangered and Threatened Plants of Wolf Lake and William W. Powers State Fish & Wildlife Area, Cook County, Illinois

This report details results obtained from that study. In this report, all endangered or threatened plant species found within the area are discussed, as are all aquatic plants. It is hoped that information on current locations of plants of special concern will be useful in the decision making process regarding management of the site. It should be stated, however, that this survey is not exhaustive, and some species were undoubtedly overlooked.IDNR Endangered Species Protection Boardunpublishednot peer reviewe

Lack of Impacts during Early Establishment Highlights a Short-Term Management Window for Minimizing Invasions from Perennial Biomass Crops

Managing intentional species introductions requires evaluating potential ecological risks. However, it is difficult to weigh costs and benefits when data about interactions between novel species and the communities they are introduced to are scarce. In anticipation of expanded cultivation of perennial biomass crops, we experimentally introduced Miscanthus sinensis and Miscanthus × giganteus (two non-native candidate biomass crops) into two different non-crop habitats (old field and flood-plain forest) to evaluate their establishment success and impact on ambient local communities. We followed these controlled introductions and the composition dynamics of the receiving communities over a 5-year period. Habitats differed widely in adult Miscanthus survival and reproduction potential between species, although seed persistence and seedling emergence were similar in the two biomass crops in both habitats. Few introductions survived in the floodplain forest habitat, and this mortality precluded analyses of their potential impacts there. In old field habitats, proportional survival ranged from 0.3 to 0.4, and plant survival and growth increased with age. However, there was no evidence of biomass crop species effects on community richness or evenness or strong impacts on the resident old field constituents across 5 years. These results suggest that Miscanthus species could establish outside of cultivated fields, but there will likely be a lag in any impacts on the receiving communities. Local North American invasions by M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus display the potential for Miscanthus species to develop aggressively expanding populations. However, the weak short-term community-level impacts demonstrated in the current study indicate a clear management window in which eradicating species footholds is easily achieved, if they can be detected early enough. Diligent long-term monitoring, detection, and eradication plans are needed to successfully minimize harmful invasions from these biomass crops

SPCIS: Standardized Plant Community with Introduced Status database

The movement of plant species across the globe exposes native communities to new species introductions. While introductions are pervasive, two aspects of variability underlie patterns and processes of biological invasions at macroecological scales. First, only a portion of introduced species become invaders capable of substantially impacting ecosystems. Second, species that do become invasive at one location may not be invasive in others; impacts depend on invader abundance and recipient species and conditions. Accounting for these phenomena is essential to accurately understand the patterns of plant invasion and explain the idiosyncratic results reflected in the literature on biological invasions. The lack of community-level richness and the abundance of data spanning broad scales and environmental conditions have until now hindered our understanding of invasions at a macroecological scale. To address this limitation, we leveraged quantitative surveys of plant communities in the USA and integrated and harmonized nine datasets into the Standardized Plant Community with Introduced Status (SPCIS) database. The database contains 14,056 unique taxa identified within 83,391 sampling units, of which 52.6% have at least one introduced species. The SPCIS database includes comparable information on plant species occurrence, abundance, and native status across the 50 U.S. States and Puerto Rico. SPCIS can be used to answer macro-scale questions about native plant communities and interactions with invasive plants. There are no copyright restrictions on the data, and we ask the users of this dataset to cite this paper, the respective paper(s) corresponding to the dataset sampling design (all references are provided in Data S1: Metadata S1: Class II-B-2), and the references described in Data S1: Metadata S1: Class III-B-4 as applicable to the dataset being utilized.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/175928/1/ecy3947.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/175928/2/ecy3947_am.pd