Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Center, USDA-Agricultural Research Service, 67826-A Hwy 205, Burns, OR, 97720, USA.
Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, 1664 N. Virginia St., Reno, NV, 89557, USA.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Jun 15;288:112417. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112417. Epub 2021 Mar 23.
Exotic annual grasses dominate millions of hectares and increase fire frequency in the sagebrush ecosystem of North America. This devastating invasion is so costly and challenging to revegetate with perennial vegetation that restoration efforts need to be prioritized and strategically implemented. Management needs to break the annual grass-fire cycle and prevent invasion of new areas, while research is needed to improve restoration success. Under current land management and climate regimes, extensive areas will remain annual grasslands, because of their expansiveness and the low probability of transition to perennial dominance. We propose referring to these communities as Intermountain West Annual Grasslands, recognizing that they are a stable state and require different management goals and objectives than perennial-dominated systems. We need to learn to live with annual grasslands, reducing their costs and increasing benefits derived from them, at the same time maintaining landscape-level plant diversity that could allow transition to perennial dominance under future scenarios. To accomplish this task, we propose a framework and research to improve our ability to live with exotic annual grasses in the sagebrush biome.
外来一年生草本植物在北美的山艾灌丛生态系统中占据了数百万公顷的土地，并增加了火灾发生的频率。这种破坏性的入侵给多年生植被的重新生长带来了高昂的成本和巨大的挑战，因此需要优先考虑并战略性地实施恢复工作。管理部门需要打破一年生草本植物-火灾的循环，防止新的地区受到入侵，同时还需要开展研究来提高恢复的成功率。在当前的土地管理和气候制度下，由于面积广阔，以及向多年生优势过渡的可能性较低，大量地区仍将保留一年生草本植物草地。我们建议将这些群落称为“山间西部一年生草原”，因为它们是一种稳定的状态，需要与多年生优势系统不同的管理目标和目的。我们需要学会与一年生草原共存，降低其成本，并增加从中获得的收益，同时保持景观水平的植物多样性，以便在未来的情景下向多年生优势过渡。为了完成这项任务，我们提出了一个框架和研究，以提高我们在山艾灌丛生物群落中与外来一年生草本植物共存的能力。
