Plant-Based Approaches to Mitigating Climate Change through Meadow Restoration
Author: Sage Keyner
Faculty Supervisor: Sara Baguskas
Department: School of the Environment
Montane meadows are critical habitats that provide ecosystem services, such as climate stability. Degraded montane meadows have historically emitted more carbon than they have stored, compared to intact and restored meadows that are net carbon sinks. Restoration of meadows aims to reestablish the hydrology of the ecosystem that promotes plant biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Our study examined the impact meadow habitat restoration on plant community composition and plant carbon-water relations. Within a degraded meadow undergoing active restoration, we measured plant community composition aboveground biomass (AGB), and plant water relations along a hydrologic gradient during the growing season (May-August) in 2022 and 2023. We found that grasses and sedges were the dominant plant functional types in our study area and differed in their phenology and abundance. Total AGB declined during the growing season, but this decline was not as steep during the historic wet year, 2023. We found that soil moisture did not correlate to plant water content as strongly as predawn water potential, which measures plant available water at the rooting zone. Overall, we found that plant carbon sequestration was higher in 2023 than 2022, and we attribute this difference to water availability in the system.