Vermont’s Long-term Rare Plant Monitoring in a Changing World

Uploaded by vmc on 02/05/2023

Tags: Monitoring   Plants   Climate Change  

Attachments: PT 1 CommunityScienceMonitoring_AaronMarcus.srt (37KB) Slide16.jpeg (212KB)

This was presented by Aaron Marcus as a part of a series of contributed talks from the 2022 FEMC Annual Conference. To learn more about the conference, visit: https://www.uvm.edu/femc/cooperative/conference/2022. Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife has been monitoring rare plants across the state for decades, with over 40 years of detailed monitoring data on the condition of thousands of plant populations. Now with the increase in community science and increasing capabilities of the Natural Heritage Inventory Database, trends in our plant populations are coming into sharper focus. One trend is an increase in the number of historical (undocumented for more than 25 years) vascular plant taxa being redocumented in recent years. The most well-known example of this is the small whorled pogonia (Isotria medeoloides), first reported by community scientists on iNaturalist, after being unreported for 120 years. An explosion of community science and a more expansive monitoring database have provided a framework for documenting overlooked plant populations that are persisting. Despite this, the Vermont Department of Fish & Wildlife is also simultaneously detecting a number of apparent decline trends for vascular plant species, with a particular concentrations in declines among the orchid family (Orchidaceae). Continued collaboration and analysis is needed to help the Vermont Fish & Wildlife and researchers focus limited resources toward priority management, adaptation, and further research.