The folks at the North Carolina Natural Heritage Program did an outstanding job looking into the impacts of soils, human alteration, and landscape context on the distribution of rare Piedmont Prairie plants. Here are a few results that stood out to me:
Rare Piedmont Prairie species mostly occur in human-altered places like powerline and roadside rights-of-way. So much of conservation focuses on “undisturbed” areas and this is a clear indication of how important altered areas are going to be in bringing back Piedmont Prairies.
A large number of occurrences weren’t associated with shrink-well or rocky soils. This supports the idea that Piedmont Prairies occurred broadly across the uplands of the Piedmont and not only on specific soils.
Overall the report underscores how intertwined people and Piedmont Prairies really are. Figuring out where many species are requires understanding the complex quilt of human influences from the Native Americans up through what we’re all doing today.