
Owen W. BaughmanThe Nature Conservancy · Burns, Oregon Field Office
Owen W. Baughman
MS
Currently investigating seed enhancement technologies for native species restoration.
About
38
Publications
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Introduction
I am interested in applied plant ecology research that addresses modern challenges in vegetation restoration and management in the American West.
Additional affiliations
May 2008 - May 2010
May 2014 - February 2018
Education
August 2011 - May 2014
August 2006 - May 2010
Publications
Publications (38)
Limited favorable weather windows for post‐germination early seedling survival are associated with low restoration success in drylands. We examined whether post‐fire seeding decisions could alter early seedling emergence and restoration success across western North American sagebrush ecosystems with a simulation approach. Seedling emergence estimat...
Local adaptation may facilitate range expansion during invasions, but the mechanisms promoting destructive invasions remain unclear. Cheatgrass ( Bromus tectorum ), native to Eurasia and Africa, has invaded globally, with particularly severe impacts in western North America. We sequenced 307 genotypes and conducted controlled experiments. We found...
Pre-emergent herbicides, commonly employed for managing invasive annual plants, often fail to meet restoration targets due to the absence of remnant perennial plants, which leaves sites vulnerable to re-invasion and hinders effective control of annual grasses. Combining an herbicide treatment with seeding is therefore desirable, but seeded plants c...
Sagebrush Steppe native plant restoration faces many hurdles to success, including extreme temperature and precipitation variability and non-native plant invasions. Multi-year preemergent herbicides are an option for annual grass control, but also prevent germination of native seeded species. Seed enhancement technologies have been recently develop...
The viability of seed often decreases during multi-year storage. For seed enhancement technologies (SETs) that apply treatments to native seed prior to sowing in restoration projects, it is important to determine if SETs affect the rate of viability loss in storage to understand if treated seeds can tolerate storage or if they must be sown immediat...
The invasion of exotic, annual plant species is a leading contributor to ecological degradation in drylands globally, and the use of pre-emergent herbicide to control these species is common. Pre-emergent herbicides pose challenges for seed-based restoration due to toxicity to the seeds of desired species. Herbicide protection (HP) technologies pos...
Efforts to restore semi‐arid wildlands in the western United States predominantly use fall seeding. Fall conditions are more amenable to seeding, and successfully over‐wintered seeds or plants are poised to take full advantage of spring moisture. However, over‐winter mortality can be a barrier to seeding success. One solution to avoid winter mortal...
Restoration in dryland ecosystems is hindered by low establishment of seeded species. As such, evaluations of current seeding methods are critical to understanding limitations and barriers to seeding success. Drill seeding is perceived as an optimal seeding strategy in many dryland ecosystems, but broadcast seeding is more commonly used as a seedin...
On the Ground
•Using native species in seed-based restoration efforts is critical for recreating or maintaining healthy, resistant, and resilient ecosystems and communities in the Intermountain Western United States.
•The use of seed from native species has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and so have research and the development of...
This guideline offers an introduction to the use of seed enhancement technologies (SETs), a group of seed pre-treatments being increasingly developed for improving the use of native seeds in restoration (Copeland et al. 2021; Madsen et al. 2016a). SETs are a natural extension to the application of treatments to manage seed dormancy, yet aim to furt...
Restoration of degraded drylands is urgently needed to mitigate climate change, reverse desertification and secure livelihoods for the two billion people who live in these areas. Bold global targets have been set for dryland restoration to restore millions of hectares of degraded land. These targets have been questioned as overly ambitious, but wit...
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will result in an unprecedented need for seeds. Agricultural production, or the growing of plants under controlled conditions to produce desired resources, can be a helpful tool for providing the quantities of seeds needed for large‐scale restoration. In some ecosystems, agricultural production of native plant...
A full list of affiliations appears at the end of the paper. R estoration ecology is rapidly advancing in response to the ever-expanding global decline in ecosystem integrity and its associated socioeconomic repercussions 1-4. Nowhere are these dynamics more evident than in drylands, which help sustain 39% of the world's human population 5 but rema...
Reducing invasive species abundance near the leading edge of invasions is important for maintaining diverse, high-functioning ecosystems, but it can be hard to remove invasives present at low levels within desirable plant communities. Focusing on an invasive annual grass, Bromus tectorum, near the edge of its range in the southern Colorado Plateau,...
Dryland ecosystems represent a significant portion of global land area, support billions of people, and suffer high rates of land degradation. Successfully restoring native vegetation to degraded drylands is a global priority and major challenge – highlighting the need for more efficient and successful restoration strategies. We introduce the conce...
Pre‐emergent herbicides are frequently used to control exotic annual plants prior to seed‐based restoration, but seeding must generally wait until herbicide toxicity has waned. The emerging seed‐enhancement technology of herbicide protection pods (HPP) allows for simultaneous seeding and herbicide application by protecting desirable seeds inside po...
Partnerships between researchers and restoration practitioners can improve restoration outcomes, which is especially important for restoration in challenging settings. Here, we describe one such partnership in the Great Basin, United States, which used trait‐based methods and practitioner knowledge to identify the most promising seed sources for re...
Establishing plants from seed is often a limitation to restoration success in semi-arid systems. For restoration purposes, managers can either use widely-available commercial seeds, which are often sourced from far outside the seeding area, or take extra steps to use locally collected seeds. If local seeds have traits more conducive to seedling est...
Variation in natural selection across heterogeneous landscapes often produces (a) among‐population differences in phenotypic traits, (b) trait‐by‐environment associations, and (c) higher fitness of local populations. Using a broad literature review of common garden studies published between 1941 and 2017, we documented the commonness of these three...
Variation in natural selection across heterogenous landscapes often produces 1) among-population differences in phenotypic traits, 2) trait-by-environment associations, and 3) higher fitness of local populations. Using a broad literature search, we documented the frequency of these three signatures in plants native to North America's Great Basin an...
Restoration of agricultural fields is challenging, especially in arid and semi-arid ecosystems. We conducted experiments in two fields in the Great Basin, USA, which differed in cultivation history and fertility. We tested the effects of different levels of functional diversity (planting grasses and shrubs together, vs. planting shrubs alone), seed...
Species and seeding rates used in the experiment, with location of seed origins.
(PDF)
Results tables and figures for weed abundance and height in 2016 and 2017.
(PDF)
Weed composition at the study sites.
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Results figure for shrub density in 2016 in the South Field, shown separately by irrigation regime.
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Results figure for shrub density in 2016 in the South Field, as related to the 4-factor model (Table 2(ii)).
(PDF)
Soil characteristics at the study sites.
(PDF)
• The phenomenon of cheatgrass die-off is a common and naturally occurring stand failure that can eliminate the presence of this annual grass for a year or more, affecting tens to hundreds of thousands of acres in some years.
• We designed a study to determine if the temporary lack of cheatgrass caused by die-offs is a restoration opportunity. We s...
The exotic annual grass Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) dominates vast acreages of rangeland in the western USA, leading to increased fire frequency and ecosystem degradation that is often irreversible. Episodic regeneration failure (“die-off”) has been observed in cheatgrass monocultures and can have negative ecosystem consequences, but can also prov...
Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) has widely invaded the Great Basin, U.S.A. The sporadic natural phenomenon of complete stand failure (‘die-off’) of this invader may present opportunities to restore native plants. A recent die-off in Nevada was precision-planted with seeds of the native grasses Poa secunda (Sandberg bluegrass) and Elymus elymoides (bot...
Restoration in the Great Basin is typically a large-scale enterprise, with aerial, drill, and broadcast seeding of perennial species common after wildfires. Arid conditions and invasive plants are significant barriers to overcome, but relatively simple changes to seeds used for restoration may improve success. Here we summarize: 1) the composition...
Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass, downy brome) is an important invader in western North America, dominating millions of hectares of former semi-arid shrubland. Stand failure or ‘die-off’ is relatively common in monocultures of this annual grass. The study reported here investigated whether soil-borne pathogens could be causal agents in die-offs. Soils f...
Downy brome (cheatgrass) is a highly successful, exotic, winter annual invader in semi-arid western North America, forming near-monocultures across many landscapes. A frequent but poorly understood phenomenon in these heavily invaded areas is periodic 'die-off' or complete stand failure. The fungal pathogen Pyrenophora semeniperda is abundant in ch...
Background/Question/Methods
The ecologically destructive, highly invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) occurs in monocultures across large areas of the semiarid West. An observed but little-studied phenomenon in B. tectorum monocultures is a discrete ‘die-off’ event, where the seed bank of this grass suddenly and inexplicably fails t...
Sites where edaphic endemic plants have evolved exist in isolated, often small patches throughout the Great Basin. Gypsophytes, plants that live on gypsum soil outcrops, are one group of edaphic endemic plants about which information on localities and habitat requirements is needed. An opportunity to provide some protection to gypsophyte species in...