Item talk:Q160168

Time to Restore: Using a Community Based Approach to Identify Key Plant Species for Pollinator Restoration

Pollinator restoration requires information about what species to plant and when to plant them to ensure food sources are available throughout the periods when pollinators are active. Changes in climate, including earlier spring warming and warmer fall temperatures, may cause flowering to become out of sync with pollinator activity. When restoring land to support pollinators, managers are challenged to select a mix of species that support pollinators of concern throughout their periods of activity. Existing planting tools have several disadvantages such as, their usability is location specific, they are virtually non-existent for the South Central region, and they do not often account for future changes in plant phenology (life cycle events) due to climate change. To provide managers with better guidance on selecting nectar plants, the project team will work with the pollinator restoration community in New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana to identify priority nectar species that are lacking in flowering and seed timing information and train volunteer observers to collect these data. The project will consider both indigenous and western science approaches to management and ensuring that land access and data privacy concerns are respected. Researchers will use the data collected as well as existing datasets to create phenology calendars (a calendar containing a sequence of phenological events) for dozens of species in the region and provide guidance about characteristics of plants such as flexibility in the start of flowering and length of the flowering season. This information will be presented through an interactive StoryMap and Info Sheets customized for each site, state, and the region to support restoration efforts planned for the near future and inform which species are most suitable for future climate conditions. This project brings together a well-developed network of project cooperators including the Rio Grande Phenology Trail in New Mexico, the Gulf Coast Phenology Trail in Louisiana, the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators in Oklahoma, and the USA National Phenology Network to form connections among those working on pollinator restoration, provide technical support, and offer guidance to inform managers about what to plant to ensure nectar availability for pollinators. This established network will provide the infrastructure for future efforts to understand changes in nectar plant phenology.