Approach
Invasive species may benefit from altered climatic regimes and related secondary effects. For example, reed canary grass capitalizes on warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, and higher nutrients while non-native cattails proliferate in wetlands with a consistently higher water table and high nutrient runoff. Early detection and rapid control of new or small infestations is a high priority in any invasive species management strategy. Climate change may present new or previously uncommon opportunities for invasive species management, particularly in terms of seasonal drying. As a resistance or resilience strategy, this approach may work for a while. Over the long term, limitations in available resources may require managers to triage sites for active versus deferred invasives management.
Tactics
- Utilize on-the-ground phenological cues rather than calendar dates to identify appropriate treatment windows for invasives.
- Monitor sites that are vulnerable to invasions (e.g., areas prone to flooding, inundation, and erosion) and control new infestations early.
- Promptly revegetate bare soils to prevent establishment of invasives.
- Control and report new invasives or unknown species that are spreading aggressively to the Early Detection and Distribution Mapping System (EDDMapS Midwest) webpage or smartphone/tablet app.
- Provide cleaning stations for heavy equipment that are used in response to large-scale disturbances such as wildfire and flood events.
- Among multiple sites, prioritize areas ahead of an invasion front, and manage high-quality sites first. Within sites, prioritize management of upstream infestations (Boos et al. 2010).
- On individual sites, prioritize species for management based on: 1) species regulated by state law; 2) other Early Detection-Rapid Response species; and 3) those that have the greatest impact.
- Reduce dominance of invasives by promoting their usage for subsistence lifestyles, e.g., harvesting narrowleaved or hybrid cat-tail rhizomes and watercress.
- Immediately secure bare soils after seeding/planting by using erosion control fabric or weed-free mulch.
- Avoid legume cover crops to limit nitrogen inputs that encourage invasives and low diversity plantings.
Strategy
Strategy Text
This strategy outlines resistance and resilience approaches to manage wetlands facing altered water budgets (water inputs, storage capacity, and outputs) due to a changing climate. Hydrology is a leading driver of wetland character and function and so expected changes to hydrologic regimes, hydrodynamics, and water levels concern wetland managers. Projections in the Upper Midwest indicate that wetlands will be influenced both by extreme precipitation and flooding events and longer drought periods between rain events. Some wetlands will become dryer and others may become wetter than long-term averages. Thus, managers face challenges (i.e., extreme flooding; drought) and opportunities (i.e., restored flood pulses to wetlands disconnected from surface or groundwater flows) in managing wetlands in the context of climate change. Restoring hydrologic connectivity has historically been a primary tactic of management efforts to restore wetlands lost or degraded by filling or draining due to land-use conversion and water extraction, and many of those same tactics can be applied or amended by wetland managers to meet climate change adaptation objectives. Restoring hydrologic connectivity and ameliorating saturated, anoxic conditions that limit decomposition also supports the capacity of wetlands to actively remove and sequester atmospheric carbon and mitigates future carbon losses.