Watershed Texas

I know it is too early to tell just how successful our herbicide treatments have been—at least how effective the treatment will be in the long term.  But, our recent vegetation monitoring cycle in Phase 2 and 3 of the restored prairie wetlands at Sheldon Lake State Park suggests a very positive effect and we can certainly hope that it lasts.

Each quarter for the last 3 years, we have ventured out to our designated vegetation assessment plots—all 156 1-square meter plots– to tally all the plants therein.  (Actually the monitoring of our restoration sites goes back to Phase 1 in 2005, but those were different ponds in a different time).  It has been through these monitoring cycles that we (TCWP staff and Paul Roling, our beloved volunteer Botanist) note the anecdotal changes in the plant communities—of which one of those observations was the increasing presence of Vaseygrass—which corroborated what Kelly, the Park’s Natural Resource Ranger, observed independently. In some areas, the Vaseygrass dominated the cover, and that spurred our summer plan to invest in regular herbicide treatments targeting the exotic grass.

Now, almost three months later since our first day out in Phase 3 with the 25-gallon sprayer, we are approaching the end of the season and we are seeing the initial results.  Whole swaths of exotic vegetation are gone, dead, done. The few mornings/afternoons of reconnaissance suggest that the “kills” were pretty thorough—with little or no live leaves and apparently few areas of regermination.  But until early September, we had no data to support what we were seeing on the ground.

Our June monitoring cycle showed Vaseygrass present in 47 of the 156 plots with the highest coverage recorded at 70-95% coverage (this is the highest record for a single plot within the whole matrix).  The September monitoring cycle showed Vaseygrass present in only 29 of the 156 plots with the highest coverage recorded at 5-30%.  That, my friends, is a drop! Of course, we would like for the coverage to be in zero plots, but that’s still the future goal and a reachable one based on these results.

We still have to finish sections of Phase 2 and hopefully we have enough time, before the end of the season, to catch it all.  Many thanks to Cullen and Kelly for keeping it going, and Paul for coming out to account for the changes.

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