Plant Ecology

Goals

• Inventory open space for significant and unique native plant communities.
• Protect significant and unique native plant communities, including rare plant sites, wetlands, riparian areas, and other important stands of vegetation.
• Help design management plans and trail corridors to minimize impact to significant plant communities.
• Maintain native plant communities through a variety of management techniques including ecological restoration, prescribed burning, and weed control.
• Restore open space that has been disturbed by human impacts such as trails, roads, mining, overgrazing, and forest thinning projects.
• Restore significant native plant communities such as wetlands and riparian corridors.
   

Current Management Activities and Highlights

• Restoration - We restore degraded areas in hopes of increasing biodiversity and creating habitat. Restoration areas include grasslands, wetlands, and riparian areas, as well as old roadbeds, trails, and trailhead areas. Projects can include earthwork and erosion control devices, planting of trees, shrubs, grasses, and/or forbs, and seeding with native seed.
• Vegetation Mapping - We use a hierarchical vegetation mapping system that uses plant dominance and the physical structure of the plants to define communities or create groupings in a spatial context.  In 2009, we mapped approximately 3,800 acres.
• Project Planning - Restoration projects require months or years of large-scale planning and design.
• Increasing Native Seed - Native seed plays a vital role in the restoration of open space and our staff strives to use the most native variety of seed possible. We use a two-fold method of collection and increase. Volunteers and staff collect seed from native grasses, forbs, shrubs, and trees. This seed is cleaned and dried, and can be used directly in restoration areas or sent to be grown out in our seed increase program. In this program the native seed is grown out and new seed is harvested and sent back to us every year.
• Monitoring - We monitor the vegetation on open space properties to ensure the health of the habitat over a long timeframe.  In 2010, we will train volunteers to increase our monitoring efforts.
• Cooperation - Our projects would not be possible without the help and support of many of our partner agencies.  They include the Youth Corps, Boulder Flycasters Chapter of Trout Unlimited, Colorado Department of Transportation, and Wildlands Restoration Volunteers.

Documents

• 2008 Plant Ecology Annual Report (450kb PDF)
• Ecological Restoration: Lending Nature a Helping Hand (20kb PDF)

What You Can Do

• Leave plants where you find them. Boulder County Parks and Open Space does not allow collection of plants for any purpose.
• Volunteer for a native seed collection or restoration event.
• Learn about weeds and how you can prevent spreading them.

Links To Other Websites

• Colorado Native Plant Society
• Colorado Natural Heritage Program
• Colorado State Parks Revegetation and Restoration
• University of Colorado at Boulder Herbarium
• Natural Resources Conservation Service Plants Database
• Plant Conservation Alliance
• Society for Ecological Restoration

Still Have Questions?

• Contact a Plant Ecology Staff person