Research
Data-driven Ecological Restoration
Ecological restoration can have unclear goals and impacts. What are we "restoring"? Why? And how do we know when we've succeeded? An important question to ask when undertaking any restoration project is "how effective is our restoration work?". In order to answer that question, we must examine the whole ecosystem and how, for example, invasive species may have altered natural conditions, and whether restoration improves those conditions.
For instance, in some locations, invasive species have effectively replaced similar native species for long enough that wildlife and other native inhabitants use the invasive species as habitat. Removal of the invasive species may then actually cause a temporary decline in habitat quality before it slowly returns to pre-invaded conditions after successful restoration.
Sierra Streams Institute has been working on numerous restoration projects in the Sierra Nevada foothills for years, with a focus on invasive species removal, native vegetation establishment, and whole-ecosystem restoration. Projects often involve removal of the highly invasive species Himalayan Blackberry (Rubus armeniacus), Yellow Star Thistle (Centaurea Solstitialus), and Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparius)
Wildlife as Biological Indicators
One way to track the effect of vegetative restoration, and see how the ecosystem has responded to invasion and restoration, is to monitor wildlife usage of the habitat using game cameras. Wildlife can be used as "Biological Indicators"-if certain species are present or absent before or after restoration, they may indicate habitat quality or wildlife sensitivity to changes in that habitat quality.
What you are viewing as part of this project are photos taken to quantify wildlife usage of a site currently undergoing vegetative restoration. We are currently at the stage where we are identifying which wildlife use the site, how often, and where. We will then continue to monitor wildlife usage of the habitat over the life of the project to ask whether habitat improved or not, and which species appear to have increased or decreased their usage relative to our restoration work.
And we need you ## Camera trap photo processing can be extremely tedious; we can sometimes get thousands of photos, with many that appear "empty" or with some that have species that are difficult to identify. Here, we can use the power of crowd-sourcing; by clicking through our photos and identifying what you see, YOU are helping us to improve our confidence in what we see and don't see, and help us determine whether our restoration efforts are successful!
