Understanding and predicting the rate and direction of community change is one of the most pressing questions of our time. Empirical evaluations of such changes are challenging, however, because they often require data from large spatial and temporal scales that are difficult to obtain. One approach to overcoming these challenges is to collect and synthesize different types of datasets to leverage their strengths while minimizing bias. Here, I use different types of historic and current data to assess plant community change over time. Specifically, I use data from the long-term Savannah River Site Corridor Project, the Wisconsin Plant Ecology Laboratory legacy dataset, and Robert Whittaker’s Klamath-Siskiyou legacy dataset to highlight the relative merits and drawbacks of collecting abundance vs. occupancy data at different spatial and temporal scales.
Results/Conclusions
Plant communities have changed dramatically over the past 18-65+ years. Dispersal and disturbance regimes play critical roles in both preventing extinctions and promoting the recovery of communities. While plant communities can change within a few years, the strength and duration of these effects plays out on the order of decades. Understanding the impact of global changes and conservation solutions on plant communities will require integrating multiple types of data collected over different spatial and temporal scales and at different intensities. Combining experimental and observational approaches and collecting new plant functional trait data has provided major insights into the processes driving community change and are well worth the investments. Importantly, critical insights have come from collecting long-term data using “simpler” methods that will help us understand community change and provide guidance for land management. Yet, these critical long-term data are especially challenging to collect due to funding, personnel, and data management challenges. I will share some of the strategies that have helped surmount these issues, including fostering partnerships with land managers.