Mountain Big Sagebrush Restoration in Former Dryland Pasture

Restoration Potential of Dryland Pastures

There are approximately 96 million acres of grassland pasture and range in the United States.¹ Many of these grassland pastures are dominated by intentionally introduced forage grasses, such as smooth brome (Bromus inermis) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), which are sod-forming grasses that have invaded grasslands and disturbed areas across North America.^2,3 With the abandonment of agricultural lands becoming increasingly common, expanding wildland restoration efforts, including dryland pastures, could help expand the total extent of wildlife habitats.^4,5 Dryland pastures also provide unique opportunities (relative to wildland restoration settings), such as greater accessibility by machinery and crews or availability of irrigation infrastructure.

Tubeling and Wildling Transplants

There has been increased interest in planting greenhouse-grown "tubelings" (containerized plants) to improve restoration outcomes. However, using "wildlings" (larger plants transplanted from a nearby intact stand) remains relatively unexplored (Figure 1). Survival of tubelings versus wildlings and under what conditions these techniques are most suitable are unclear. We explored the short-term survival of tubelings and wildlings of mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana) in the context of dryland pasture rehabilitation and compared costs between the methods (Figure 1).

Study Site

Research was conducted on the Fox Hills Ranch, 10 miles northeast of Soda Springs, Idaho (42.769415° N, -111.472490° W; Figure 2). The average annual precipitation is 27 in. A large portion of the ranch was previously converted from sagebrush rangeland to pastures dominated by smooth brome and Kentucky bluegrass to enhance livestock forage.

Seedbed Preparation

The competitive grass species in the pasture created the need for seedbed preparation with herbicide applications. Following heavy grazing in October 2018, the 237-acre site was disced with three passes (Case IH Ecolo Tiger 870 22-ft Disc Ripper) and harrowed (60-ft 15 Bar McFarlane Harrow Cart). On July 31, 2019, glyphosate and dicamba were applied with a boom sprayer at 0.9 quarts/acre and 0.6 quarts/acre, respectively. On September 24 and 25, 2019, final seedbed preparation was completed with one pass of a chisel plow and one pass with a harrow. In October 2019, the project area was drill-seeded with a mix of 22 native and introduced rangeland species, including eight perennial grasses and 14 perennial forbs. Most species were selected to provide cover and support the dietary needs of the greater sage-grouse (Table 1).

Plan Materials and Planting

Tubelings were grown in 10 in.³ Ray Leach SC10 “Cone-tainers”™ by North Fork Native Plants (Rexburg, Idaho) from seed collected near Logan, Utah, in a similar elevation and climate. Dibble sticks were used to create planting holes for tubelings, which were 4 to 5 months old at planting time. Wildlings were harvested in an area slated for future development, about 7 miles from Fox Hills Ranch. Crew members used round-point digging shovels to dig up wildlings and a shovel-blade-sized amount of dirt surrounding the root ball. Wildling plants were small (6–25 cm tall) and non-reproductive. The plants were wrapped in burlap and secured with twine, transported to the field site, and planted the same day as collected. Tubelings and wildlings were each arranged in 15m × 15m "islands" of 25 plants (i.e., 450 plants per acre). No supplemental water was applied.

Table 1. Twenty-Two Plant Species Included in Seed Mix and Their Seeding Rate (pounds of pure live seed [pls] per acre)

^*= non-native

Tubeling vs Wildling Performance

• Most losses occurred in the first winter/spring period (October 2019–June 2020).
• Planting errors (e.g., partially exposed roots) contributed to lower tubeling survival. However, larger wildling plants appeared to be more resistant to planting errors.
• By the third summer post-planting, 19% of tubelings had survived, compared to 82% of wildlings (Figure 3).
• Most surviving wildlings and more than one third of surviving tubelings showed evidence of reproduction.
• By the third year, there were 220 sagebrush plants/acre (± 1 SE = 85) in tubeling plots and 889 sagebrush plants/acre (± 1 SE = 196) in wildling plots.
• Wildlings required greater planting effort (4 minutes per plant versus 30 seconds per tubeling) but were cheaper when comparing dollars spent per surviving plant or per established plant (i.e., including surviving plants plus new recruits) (Table 2).

Table 2. Comparing Estimated Costs for Tubeling and Wildling Treatments

Notes: This estimate uses a $15.00/hr labor wage. Costs excluded from the analysis include seed testing and cleaning, transportation from the greenhouse to the site, and planting tools for tubelings and harvest permits, burlap, twine, and planting tools for wildlings.

Seedbed Preparation and Transplant Survival

Our efforts reduced the cover of introduced grasses from 41% pre-treatment to 4% post-treatment. We might have achieved even greater reductions if we applied herbicide before disturbing plants with discing and harrowing (further reducing the likelihood of any residual herbicide effects on our seeding and plantings). In areas where establishment of seeded grass and forb species was higher, we also found that first-year sagebrush tubelings survival was higher. Tubeling survival was lower where Kentucky bluegrass and some weedy species were most abundant. Wildlings, on the other hand, did not appear to respond to these factors.

Conclusions

Our study supports using older, naturally grown sagebrush plants (wildlings) for restoration efforts. Wildlings had already faced various environmental stresses before transplantation and had a survival advantage when transplanted. Our study also demonstrates how successfully established transplants planted in "islands" aid in future recruitment of sagebrush. Overall, because of their higher survival, we found that wildlings led to higher sagebrush densities and were a more cost-effective approach.

We recommend using wildlings with the following caveats:

1. When restoring large land areas, transplants are most appropriate as a complement to seeding treatments (that can more easily be applied over larger areas) or for multi-phase projects in which transplanting can be implemented in smaller sub-areas in successive years.
2. A "donor" site near the target field site and associated permissions are needed for using wildlings.
3. The decision of when to harvest and plant wildlings (or plant tubelings) should ideally be timed to maximize precipitation and soil moisture at the harvest and target locations.^6-8
4. Suppressing perennial grass competition before project implementation will improve transplanting (and seeding) outcomes.⁸

Acknowledgments

Photos were provided by the authors. The authors acknowledge the content, including figures and tables, are republished from Bailey et al., 2024.⁹

Funding was provided by Bayer, the Utah State University Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and USDA-ARS.

References

1. Lubowski, R. N., Plantinga, A. J. & Stavins, R. N. (2006). Land-use change and carbon sinks: Econometric estimation of the carbon sequestration supply function. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 51(1), 135–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2005.08.001
2. Otfinowski, R., Kenkel, N. C. & Catling, P. M. (2007). The biology of Canadian weeds. 134. Bromus inermis Leyss. Canadian Journal of Plant Science, 87(1), 183–198. https://doi.org/10.4141/P06-071
3. DeKeyser, E., Dennhardt, L. & Hendrickson, J. (2015). Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis) invasion in the Northern Great Plains: A story of rapid dominance in an endangered ecosystem. Invasive Plant Science and Management, 8(3), 255–261. https://doi.org/10.1614/IPSM-D-14-00069.1
4. Cramer, V., Hobbs, R. & Standish, R. (2008). What's new about old fields? Land abandonment and ecosystem assembly. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(2), P104–112 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.10.005
5. Uselman, S. M., Davison, J., Baughman, O. W., Sullivan, B. W., Miller, W. W., & Leger, E. A. (2018). Restoring dryland old fields with native shrubs and grasses: Does facilitation and seed source matter? PLoS ONE, 13, e0205760. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0205760
6. Meyer, S. E. (2008). Artemisia L.: Sagebrush. In F. T. Bonner & R. P. Karrfalt (Eds.), Woody plant seed manual (pp. 274–280). U.S. Department of Agriculture.
7. Shriver, R. K., Andrews, C. M., Pilliod, D. S., Arkle, R. S., Welty, J. L., Germino, M. J., Duniway, M. C., Pyke, D. A., & Bradford, J. B. (2018) Adapting management to a changing world: Warm temperatures, dry soil, and interannual variability limit restoration success of a dominant woody shrub in temperate drylands. Global Change Biology, 24(10), 4972–4982. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14374
8. McAdoo, J. K., Boyd, C. S., & Sheley, R. L. (2013). Site, competition, and plant stock influence transplant success of Wyoming big sagebrush. Rangeland Ecology & Management, 66(3), 305–312. https://doi.org/10.2111/REM-D-12-00136.1
9. Bailey, E. C., Thacker, E., Monaco, T. A. & Veblen, K. E. (2024). Transplanted sagebrush "wildlings" exhibit higher survival than greenhouse-grown tubelings yet both recruit new plants. BMC Ecology and Evolution 24, Article 50.
   https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-024-02236-z

Suggested citation:
Bailey, E. C., Thacker, E. T., Monaco, T. A., Veblen, K.E. (2024). Mountain big sagebrush restoration in former dryland pasture
[Fact sheet]. Utah State University Extension.

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Authors

Elizabeth C. Bailey,^1,2 Eric T. Thacker,¹ Thomas A. Monaco,³ and Kari E. Veblen^1,2

¹Utah State University (USU) Department of Wildland Resources, ²USU Ecology Center,
³USDA-ARS Forage and Range Research Lab

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