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2017 Update: Fire & fitness of EA

In 2017, we searched in 7 recruitment plots for flowering Echinacea angustifolia plants. For each flowering plant, we took demographic data- counting the number of rosettes, counting the number of flowering heads, and shooting a GPS point of the exact location of the plant. Four plots had no flowering plants, but three of the plots had a total of 43 flowering Echinacea plants. Of the plots with flowering plants, two plots (with 35 of the flowering plants) are located at Hegg Lake, a site managed by the Minnesota DNR, and one plots (with 8 flowering plants) is located at Eng Lake.

This recruitment experiment was originally established in 2000 to quantify seedling emergence and juvenile survival of Echinacea angustifolia during its reintroduction to sites with varying land-use history and burn schedules. Before 2014, detailed data was collected on each plant in the plots. Since 2014, we’ve censused each plot yearly to collect demographic data for every flowering plant.

Echinacea at Hegg Lake, photo by Wes Braker 

Year started: Plantings in 2000-2002

Location: Ten study plots on state land with different land use histories: old-field and restored grassland.

Overlaps with: Demographic census in remnants

Data collected: Status, rosette count, flowering head count, GPS point for each flowering plant in each recruitment plot

Products:A paper (Wagenius et al. 2012) published in Restoration Ecology.

You can find more information about the effects of fire on seedling recruitment of Echinacea angustifolia on the background page for the experiment.

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