Ecology and Management of Cattail
Webinar Details
When:
Feb 26, 2015 2:00 pm US/Eastern
Length: 01:30 (hh:mm)
Advance Registration NOT required.
View now on-demand.
Presenter(s):
- Leigh H. Fredrickson, Ph.D., Senior Ecologist, Wetland Management and Educational Services, Inc.
CEU Credits/Certificate Offered:
- Conservation Planner (CP) - 1.5 hour Conservation Planning Credit
- Society for Range Management (SRM) - 1.5 hour SRM Credit
- The Wildlife Society - Certified Wildlife Biologist®/Professional Development Certificate Program - 1.5 hour TWS Category 1 Credit
Virtual Event Format:
Group Viewing Available:
Participants will learn about the ecology of cattail and management options in the context of abiotic conditions, land use practices, and plant physiology.
Full title: Ecology and Management of Cattail: Consideration of abiotic conditions, land use practices, and physiological characteristics to promote good cover-water interspersion or to control unwanted cattail
Cattail is a commonly used name for a wetland plant with a global distribution that can be beneficial or a nuisance. The 30 species are in the family Typhaceae and three of these and a hybrid are common in many North American wetlands. Historically, cattails were generally described as valuable wetland plants because they provided nesting, foraging, and thermal habitat in robust emergent marsh systems for wetland dependent warm- and cold-blooded species. Cattails were also important for a diversity of invertebrates that lived on the leaves, within the stems and rhizomes, as well as in the detritus form from senesced plants. These invertebrates are critically important because they provide the protein that is essential for breeding and molting wetland-dependent birds as well as for cold-blooded vertebrates. As ephemeral, temporary, and seasonal wetlands were lost through drainage into larger more permanent basins, cattail distribution changed from a more widely dispersed condition in wetlands with short hydroperiods to dense stands in basins with longer hydroperiods. As more and more wetlands were subjected to modifications resulting from changes in agricultural practices, sedimentation rates increased as did N and P levels; hydroperiods became longer; and the location, prevalence, and area of decadent cattail stands increased across the continent. This gradual expansion of decadent cattail increased wetland management challenges causing great frustration for wetland managers because of greater need for diverse information, increasing costs of cattail control, and greater patience to address this demanding issue. The vast changes in agricultural practices, increasing demands on water resources, and a continuing focus on species rather than systems processes compromise the potential to develop management strategies appropriate for cattail control in an increasingly modified setting. It is within this framework that the presenter will share their experiences of more than 50 years across a wide spatial scale with others that are attempting to meet the challenges of managing cattail in highly modified environments. Hopefully these experiences will stimulate thinking appropriate for making management decisions about cattail in many different settings.
This webinar is presented by USDA NRCS Science and Technology.
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