Andy Sipocz - Restoring Farmland to Coastal Prairie at Sheldon Lake State Park

Prairie Restora+on at Sheldon Lake State Park Restoring Agricultural Lands to Prairie Andrew Sipocz Texas Parks and Wildlife Department State Parks Division Andrew.sipocz@tpwd.texas.gov

Why Are You Doing This?

• Na+ve Pasture/Hay Field • BuKerfly/Pollinator Habitat • Urban Na+ve Plant Garden • Hun+ng Area/Lease • Plant and Wildlife Conserva+on This will determine how you will go about much of your restora+on work

What Are The Site Constraints?

• LiKle funding or staff, most of the work funded by grants and done by volunteers • Future management must be inexpensive and not labor intensive • Difficulty with contracts or out of Department site use

Methods

Done in phases as money and staff +me becomes available and volunteers are ready to move on to the next sec+on Heavily dependent upon prescribed fire to manage and prepare the site

Sheldon Lake State Park Prairie Restora+on Why?

• To provide visitors with a view of an authen+c coastal prairie landscape (prior to severe altera+on) • To conserve Texas’ coastal prairie plant and wildlife species (Biodiversity)

Goals

Topographic restora+on Reestablish the en+re suite of species once found in the Park’s prairies

What Are The Current Site Condi+ons?

• At Sheldon the site had been land-­‐leveled for rice and had been farmed with corn and other row crops • Prior to that the site had been inundated for 10 years • Residual plant species were a typical mix of agricultural weeds

Sheldon Lake State Park Prairie Restora+on How Was It Accomplished?

• Adap+ve Management • Each phase has been accomplished differently • Always learning and never sa+sfied (normal condi+on for prairie restora+onists)

Get To Know Your Site • Holocene and Beaumont Geologic Forma+ons (Coastal Terrace) o Meander ridges with channel scars, ponds, mima fields o Interdistributary Valleys (flats and very broad swales)

• Lissie Geologic and Willis Geologic Forma+ons and Older o o o o

Original fluvial deltaic topography has been erased through erosion Ponds and mima fields Salt dome ridges, faults Creeks

Texas Coastal Prairie (Clay Plain) Geologic Seang Holocene – during Pleistocene high stands the Brazos and other rivers were not entrenched and did this across the coastal plain

Sheldon’s Geologic Seang and Soils • Beaumont derived from San Jacinto/Trinity River sediments (sandier than Brazos River) • Two very prominent meander ridges with two valleys o Lighter (loams and fine sands) soils on the meander ridges with lots of historic ponds and mima mounds o Heavier (clays) soils in the intervening valleys

Beaumont Coastal Terrace Geologic Seang

Different Types Of Soil, pH Levels, Degree Of Wetness • This is known as a site’s Topoedaphic Sequence • Each unique set of soils and topography supports a different group of plant and wildlife species

How Did We Determine Sheldon’s Historic Plant Communi+es?

• Historic photos • Soil maps (Beware of inclusions – 10-­‐acre mapping units and errors) • Detailed topographic maps or LIDAR • Nearby Reference Sites for each topoedaphic seang • Geologic seang • Soil cores and soil tests • Field experience

lots and lots of field experience – visi+ng rela+vely undisturbed reference areas, being aware of their management history and topoedaphic seang and having decent botanical skills are necessary

Historic Photos and Topographic Maps

Nearby Reference Sites Same set of historic photos and topographic maps were viewed for the reference sites

Soil Pits To Verify Aerial Photos

Seeding/Plan+ng • Natural plant communi+es develop through differen+al germina+on and survival of seeds and seedlings ! A broad mix of species uniformly seeded across a site will form different plant communi+es dependent upon the various topoedaphic seangs ! You may desire to create different seed mixes in order to not waste seed

• Use of sprigs avoids this stage, so probably best to leave things as they’re found at reference sites ! You get what you plant where you plant it, you’ve bypassed the prairie’s “sor+ng out stage” ! Large or vegeta+vely aggressive species may crowd out those that would normally be found in that microhabitat

Sheldon Seeding • Phase I used a wet, mesic and dry seed mix all of which were derived from AKwater NWR fall harvests and addi+onal commercially grown seed • Phase II and II used a single mix largely derived from fall harvests of the Univ. of Houston Coastal Center with AKwater’s added for increased liKle bluestem density. This mix was mostly Andropogon glomeratus and A. virginicus with about 40 other species of grasses and forbs (whatever was ripe during the Thanksgiving harvest). The Andropogon matrix seems a good way of keeping out weeds (Vasey Grass, Australian/Asian Bluestems) while allowing interplan+ng and interseeding to occur later on.

• Recent San Jacinto SHS used a seed mix harvested from the Dick Benoit Prairie Preserve in League City with 100+ species including all topoedaphic sites typically found on the Beaumont Terrace prairies

San Jacinto SHS Single Mix “ecosystem in a bag” (Benoit Prairie in League City)

Sheldon Plan+ngs • The plan+ng program is a long term undertaking to increase the cover and diversity of na+ve prairie plants in the restora+on area; this is typically referred to as interplan+ng and interseeding (plan+ng and/or seeding into a prairie that has been either degraded from past management or was established through seeding but is species depauperate) o Seed mixes used at Sheldon were derived from single harvests and only contain what was ripe at the +me, thus the need to add species to the restora+on

• Volunteers collect and grow many species of locally collected grasses and forbs, both through digging and transplanta+on of culms and germina+on and propaga+on of collected seed • Some seed, especially larger forb seed, is directly sown onto the restora+on site • More effort is being given towards matching species and site condi+ons versus earlier wholescale grid paKern plan+ng of uniform species mix

Why Be Cau+ous About Plant Collec+on Loca+ons When Sprigging and Choosing Seed Harvest Loca+ons?

• The same species or similar genotypes (phenotypes) are likely to be found on the same soil types and topographic seangs regardless of distance apart (ex. Dunes Paspalum, Gulf Coast Cordgrass, Prairie Cordgrass, Jamaica Sawgrass) and yet • Divergent genotypes may grow next to one another where the topoedaphic sequence is steep (changes quickly). Differen+al seed germina+on and seedling survival keeps the gene+cs sorted (June Grass).

• Sprigs will grow wherever you plant them, even if not typical of that site. They maybe displacing other poten+al species.

Sheldon Phase IV

Sheldon Prairie Management