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Effects of Mowing and Prescribed Fire on Plant Community Structure and Function in Rare Coastal Sandplains, Nantucket Island, MA, USA

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Abstract

Coastal sandplains provide habitat for a suite of rare and endangered plant and wildlife species in the northeastern United States. These early successional plant communities were maintained by natural and anthropogenic disturbances including salt spray, fire, and livestock grazing, but over the last 150 years, a decrease in anthropogenic disturbance frequency and intensity has resulted in a shift towards woody shrub dominance at the expense of herbaceous taxa. This study quantified the effects of more than a decade of dormant season disturbance-based vegetation management (mowing and prescribed fire) on coastal sandplain plant community composition on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, USA. We used time-series plant cover data from two similar sites to evaluate the effectiveness of disturbance management for restoring herbaceous species cover and reducing woody shrub dominance. Our results indicate that applying management outside of the peak of the growing season has not been effective in maintaining or increasing the cover of herbaceous species. While management activities resulted in significant (P < 0.01) increases in herbaceous species immediately after treatment, woody species recolonized and dominated treated sites within 3-years post treatment at the expense of graminoids and forbs. These results highlight the difficulties associated with directing ecological succession using disturbance-based management to maintain rare, herbaceous species in coastal sandplain systems that were once a prevalent landscape component under historically chronic anthropogenic disturbance. Further experimentation with growing season disturbance-based management and different combinations of management techniques could provide insights into management alternatives for maintaining herbaceous conservation targets in coastal sandplains.

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Author Contributions

RF, KB conceived and designed the experiments and oversaw field management activities. RF, DO, KO oversaw the vegetation data collection and data management. HP, JK analyzed the data and wrote the paper. HP, RF, JK interpreted the results. HP, JK, RF, KB, DO, KO contributed to editing of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of the Environment, Wesleyan University, 284 High St, Middletown, CT, 06457, USA

    Helen Mills Poulos

  2. Nantucket Islands Land Bank, 22 Broad St, Nantucket, MA, 02554, USA

    Rachael S. Freeman

  3. Nantucket Conservation Foundation, Inc., Science and Stewardship Department, 118 Cliff Rd, Nantucket, MA, 02554, USA

    Jennifer M. Karberg, Karen C. Beattie, Danielle I. O’Dell & Kelly A. Omand

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  1. Helen Mills Poulos
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  2. Rachael S. Freeman
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  3. Jennifer M. Karberg
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  4. Karen C. Beattie
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  5. Danielle I. O’Dell
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  6. Kelly A. Omand
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Correspondence to Helen Mills Poulos.

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Poulos, H.M., Freeman, R.S., Karberg, J.M. et al. Effects of Mowing and Prescribed Fire on Plant Community Structure and Function in Rare Coastal Sandplains, Nantucket Island, MA, USA. Environmental Management 65, 111–121 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-019-01233-z

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