What governs restoration successes and failures?
​The agency personnel and private landowners with whom we work are skilled and knowledgeable restoration practitioners, but their efforts can nonetheless be hampered by factors such as drought, weeds, and lack of ecological information. In our research we aim to understand what governs past failures and successes, work with practitioners to improve current practices, and improve our understanding of the ecology of the systems being restored. Examples of our projects include: 1) using state-wide data maintained by the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI) to retrospectively investigate the outcomes of widely-used landscape-scale restoration approaches across different vegetation types and landscape factors; 2) working with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to test how the inclusion of high-performing introduced grasses (e.g., crested wheatgrass) in restoration seed mixes affects restoration outcomes; and 3) collaborating with Dr. Tom Monaco at the USDA-ARS Forage and Range Research Laboratory to test how different plant materials, like varieties of bluebunch wheatgrass, perform in restoration settings. 

photo credit: Spencer Good

Pre-emptive and high input restoration
​We are investigating pre-emptive, high input approaches to restoration in the western U.S., a general strategy that contrasts sharply with standard practice for the region. Most simply this entails 1) emphasizing restoration of at-risk areas before they are so degraded that restoration becomes virtually impossible, and 2) investing greater resources into initial restoration efforts, for example, by transplanting containerized plants rather than direct seeding (the latter of which is relatively efficient, but often fails and needs to be repeated). Although these themes pervade many of our restoration projects, some of our key work in this subject area was a project funded by USDA-NIFA. In this project we have investigated the institutional feasibility of pre-emptive, high input restoration approaches across Great Basin rangelands and used controlled field studies to test how transplants of native herbaceous species can be used to restore areas where sagebrush canopies are intact (i.e., prior to conversion from sagebrush shrubland to cheatgrass monoculture). 

Another important element of our research in this subject area addresses the strategic placement of these high input plantings across the landscape. At a mountain sagebrush site in southeastern Idaho, we are testing the efficacy of concentrating restoration efforts into the establishment of sagebrush ‘islands (rather than more diffusely across the landscape). On the Colorado Plateau, we have found that targeting sagebrush plantings in areas of the landscape characterized by coarser, shallower soils improves restoration success, and we are continuing to investigate how mature sagebrush and the rest of the plant community respond to these landscape factors. ​

​​​Large herbivores and restoration
​Although large herbivores (e.g., cattle) are implicitly involved in most rangeland restoration projects, they usually are not explicitly included as part of the restoration process. More closely examining the roles of the wild and domestic large herbivores that are supported by these rangeland systems provides opportunities to both mitigate herbivory as a barrier to restoration success and use large herbivores as tools for restoration. Our research in this area has included field tests of how large ungulates can be used as restoration tools, in particular elk for enhancing the herbaceous understory in northern Utah; cattle for controlling Phragmites in wetlands of the Great Salt Lake; and cattle for reducing bare ground and creating wildlife hotspots in Kenya. 

photo credit: Tim Bateman