Date of Award:

8-2025

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Wildland Resources

Committee Chair(s)

Kari E. Veblen

Committee

Kari E. Veblen

Committee

Lesley A. DeFalco

Committee

Youping Sun

Abstract

Plant biodiversity is crucial for the proper functioning of ecosystems, with many species needed to maintain the variety of functions provided, especially with increasing environmental change. However, plant biodiversity is threatened in many different ecosystems, primarily through habitat loss. Species can be conserved by protecting their original habitat and mitigating for threats such as invasive species or altered disturbance regimes (plant conservation); however, with declining population numbers and continued habitat loss and/or disturbance, it may be necessary to actively move plants (plant restoration). Plant restoration is dependent on developing the capacity to a) reliably propagate plants in a nursery and b) effectively establish these plants on the landscape to either create new populations in suitable habitat or supplement existing populations. To inform management efforts, we researched different propagation and out- planting methods for a vulnerable species in the Mojave Desert, USA: white-margined beardtongue (Penstemon albomarginatus M. E. Jones). We successfully propagated the species using stem cuttings and refined this process. We characterized habitat across the species’ range of P. albomarginatusand found that mature plants were more associated with interspaces and strongly avoided shrub canopy cover. We conducted the two following out-planting trials for the species: 1) determined a lower level of watering (1.9 L/plant every two weeks for eight weeks) that supported plant establishment and 2) tested planting into different landscape microsites to see if microhabitat affected plant establishment. Data from the first growing season of the latter out-planting trial suggest that interspace gaps between perennial plants are the best out-planting microsites for this species, although long-term monitoring is still needed. In both of our planting trials, we achieved relatively high establishment in suitable habitat outside of the species’ current range, which holds promise for potential management efforts to create new populations in suitable areas. Our findings are helpful guidelines that can be referenced by restoration practitioners developing restoration plans for P. albomarginatus.

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Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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