Restoring Native Perennial Grasses by Changing Grazing Practices in Central Coastal California

Abstract

While burning effects did not persist through time, reinstituting burning at appropriate intervals would be feasible given the abundance of grassy fuel present and positive response of native grasses to burning (Packard and Mutel 1997). If additional knapweed suppression was desired, residual knapweed densities on restored plots remained low enough where hand pulling would be an effective and practical treatment (MacDonald et al. 2013). Our results are most applicable to the restoration of native warm-season grasses on degraded, knapweed-infested sites in the upper Midwest, and demonstrate that these native grasses can effectively suppress knapweed for extended time periods even in the absence of fire. Where the restoration of more diverse native plant communities is an important goal, the inclusion of these native grasses in a broad seed mix may similarly facilitate the gradual suppression of spotted knapweed.