Date of Award
2020
Publisher
North Dakota State University
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Awarded
Master of Science (MS)
Program
Natural Resources Management
Department
Natural Resource Sciences
College
Interdisciplinary Studies
Faculty Advisor
DeKeyser, Shawn
Description
Vast areas of rangeland have been degraded or lost to row crop agriculture and urban development in the United States since European colonization. Two projects were undertaken to investigate strategies to improve diversity and forage production, while reducing invasive species on degraded prairie and also the revegetation of prairie susceptible to erosion. The projects sought to determine the effects of several pre-seeding burn and herbicide treatments paired with the interseeding of native species and to develop a seed mixture that is effective for restoring highly erodible areas devoid of vegetation. Results indicate that treatments pre-treated with herbicide have significantly higher biomass production and diversity along with a lower abundance of introduced species than the control. A seed mix selected for sites subject to high erosion paired with a topsoil layer addition resulted in higher native species richness, native species percent cover, and lower introduced species percent cover than the control.
Recommended Citation
Stallman, Jace William, "The Investigation of Restoration Techniques for Two Degraded Rangeland Sites in North Dakota" (2020). Natural Resources Management. 66.
https://digitalcommons.ndsu.edu/nrm/66
Rights
NDSU policy 190.6.2
Rights Link
https://www.ndsu.edu/fileadmin/policy/190.pdf
Handle Identifier
https://hdl.handle.net/10365/32302