Longleaf Pine Restoration

The creation of farmland is a leading cause of ecosystem destruction worldwide, yet farmland is frequently abandoned. The resulting post-agricultural ecosystems are widespread and present opportunities for restoration. They also frequently bear long-lasting legacies of past farming activities, including persistently altered plant communities. Understanding agricultural legacies and constraints to plant species recover will help restore post-agricultural ecosystems.

Through a series of long-running experiments in the Southeastern United States, we are testing how agricultural history exerts ecological legacies on longleaf pine ecosystems and constraints to groundlayer plant recovery.

Relevant publications

Orrock, J. L., Brudvig, L. A., Damschen, E. I., Mattingly, W. B., Cruz, J., Veldman, J. W., Hahn, P. G., & Larsen-Gray, A. L. (2023). Long-term, large-scale experiment reveals the effects of seed limitation, climate, and anthropogenic disturbance on restoration of plant communities in a biodiversity hotspot. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(7), e2201943119. [link]

Brudvig, L. A., Turley, N. E., Bartel, S. L., Bell-Dereske, L., Breland, S., Damschen, E. I., Evans, S.E., Gibbs, J., Hahn, P. G., Isaacs, R., Ledvina, J. A., Orrock, J. L., Sorenson, Q. M., & Stuhler, J. D. (2021). Large ecosystem-scale effects of restoration fail to mitigate impacts of land-use legacies in longleaf pine savannas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(17), e2020935118. [link]

Barker, C. A., Turley, N. E., Orrock, J. L., Ledvina, J. A., & Brudvig, L. A. (2019). Agricultural land-use history does not reduce woodland understory herb establishment. Oecologia, 189, 1049-1060. [link]

Turley, N. E., Orrock, J. L., Ledvina, J. A., & Brudvig, L. A. (2017). Dispersal and establishment limitation slows plant community recovery in post‐agricultural longleaf pine savannas. Journal of Applied Ecology, 54(4), 1100-1109. [link]