On June 18, Artemis Sportswomen, the Tennessee Wildlife Federation, and the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative hosted a field trip to Catoosa Wildlife Management Area for women in conservation. The purpose of the field trip was to learn about the conservation and importance of Tennessee’s vanishing savannas and other grassland ecosystems. It was a perfect day for a field trip. The heat and humidity of the week before had broken and left in its place one of those rare, cool, summer days filled with sunshine and a constant breeze.
July 5, 2022 Newsletter
Field work, education and outreach, volunteer activities, restoration work, networking, and much more are some of the many activities that SGI has been involved with this month. Read this newsletter to hear about all our exciting news and announcements, find out about upcoming events, and be reminded of our recent blog articles.
Help Us Identify Georgia’s Grassland Remnants
Oftentimes, when I introduce myself as the Georgia Grasslands Coordinator, I am met with a puzzled look that is usually followed by the question, “What is a grassland?” I am always glad to share the truth about Georgia’s landscape. Unfortunately, I usually have to use grasslands outside of our area to illustrate what our landscape would have looked like. Outside of the longleaf pine savanna, many of our grasslands have vanished. Today, we can only see glimpses of what used to be, and those glimpses are often found in utility right-of-ways and roadsides.
Project Update: Soak Creek Savanna Restoration Project
The Soak Creek Savanna Restoration Project consists of approximately 375 acres that had been clear cut on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Approximately half of the area was recently burned, while the other half was burned in 2021. This project is being conducted in conjunction with TennGreen Land Conservancy, Panther Creek Forestry (PCF), and Austin Peay State University (APSU).
Getting to Know Us: Reed Noss
Reed Noss is the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative’s Chief Science Advisor and the author of the book, Forgotten Grasslands of the South. Reed brings a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise in a wide variety of areas to the SGI Team. His educational background includes a B.S. in Education with an emphasis in outdoor and environmental education from the University of Dayton, an M.S. in Ecology from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, and a PhD in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Florida. Recently we sat down with Reed to learn a little more about him and his role at SGI.
June 2022 Newsletter
May has been an extremely busy and exciting month for us. Our first “annual retreat” in over 2 years, education and outreach, volunteer activities, restoration work, networking, and much more are some of the many activities that SGI has been involved with this month. Read this newsletter to hear about all our exciting news and announcements, be reminded of our recent blog articles, and find out the hot topics being discussed in our Facebook group.
Project Update: More Good Finds From the Cumberland Plateau Powerline Grasslands
In early May I made the familiar drive east across Tennessee for a week of field work in and around the large Tennessee Valley Authority powerline corridors that cross the surface of the Cumberland Plateau. This work is part of a multi-year study looking at the value of these open rights-of-way to grassland biodiversity, specifically to plants and their insect pollinators.
SGI Participated in the 2022 Great Smoky Mountains Wildflower Pilgrimage
Southeastern Grasslands Initiative Staff Attended the Center for Plant Conservation National Meeting 2022
Earlier this year, SGI became an official partner of the Center for Plant Conservation (CPC), an organization that advances the science and practice of rare plant conservation by making sure its partners are equipped with the resources to best save plants. In particular, these partners – or as CPC calls them, Participating Institutions – are organizations that maintain ex situ rare plant collections. This could mean live plants in a botanic garden or seeds in a seed bank. With the establishment of our Conservation Seed Bank which focuses on rare and declining grassland plants, we were a perfect match to partner up with CPC.
Searching for Porter’s Goldenrod in 2022
Over a century ago the botanist and Presbyterian minister Thomas Conrad Porter collected a rather elusive plant in Jasper County, Georgia (southeast of Atlanta). Upon collecting it, T.C. Porter identified it as one species. Half a century later in 1902, his nephew, the famous botanist John Kunkel Small, author of the original Flora of the Southeastern United States, took another look at his uncle’s collected specimens. He recognized the specimen as a species new to science and named it after his esteemed uncle – Solidago porteri, or Porter’s Goldenrod. After that, T.C. Porter’s pressed plant specimens sat nestled away in the New York Botanical Garden Herbarium and were promptly lost to the annals of history. That is, until another century and change later when SGI’s Executive Director Dwayne Estes discovered a new population in south-central Tennessee nearly 250 miles from where T.C. Porter originally collected it in Georgia in 1846.