Sara Baer
University of Kansas, KS·Ecology & Evolution
Converting farmland back into native grassland is a popular way to rebuild wildlife habitat and store carbon in soil, but the results are hard to predict: two fields restored the same way can end up with very different plant communities and very different amounts of soil carbon. Part of the reason may be luck of the draw in weather.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
grassland restoration
prairie reconstruction
plant community ecology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Model how climate conditions during the planting year steer the long-term trajectory of restored grassland plant communities, using species composition data from restorations established every other year over twelve years in one agricultural field.
- Test whether resilience to drought increases as a restored grassland ages and whether it depends on the climate-shaped community state, taking advantage of multiple droughts that occurred during the experiment.
- Determine whether soil carbon accrual is driven more by hard-to-decompose or by high-quality plant inputs, by relating the ratio of C4 grasses to C3 forbs to stable carbon isotope signatures in soil.
- Quantify rates of soil carbon accumulation across restorations of different ages and community composition to improve forecasts of carbon storage in grasslands restored from cultivated land.
More about the research
The rain and temperature in the year seeds are sown can shape which species establish, and that early difference may persist for decades. This project asks whether year-to-year climate variation leaves a lasting, predictable imprint on restored grasslands, how well those communities bounce back from drought, and how fast carbon builds up in soil that was degraded by cultivation.
Why it matters
Landowners and conservation programs restoring marginal cropland to grassland need to know what plant communities to expect and how much carbon the soil will hold. By linking establishment-year weather to long-term community composition, drought resilience and soil carbon accrual, this work could reduce uncertainty in restoration planning and in estimates of grassland carbon sequestration, which matter for climate policy in the southern Great Plains and beyond.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Melinda Smith
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Measure how free-roaming bison change plant species makeup and diversity in Montana montane fescue grasslands, comparing 12 grazed plots with matched fenced plots before and after reintroduction.
Zakary Ratajczak
Kansas State University, KS·Ecology & Evolution
Test multiple rainout shelter designs at Konza Prairie to determine whether bison use areas under shelters at similar rates as unsheltered areas, by quantifying bison use and activity.
Richard Lankau
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Track how soil microbial communities and food webs develop on Midwestern farmland after farming stops or agroforestry begins, comparing sites with different times since abandonment and restoration practices.
The school
University of Kansas: 26 labs on PI Pages, $546M a year on research, 351 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.