Researchers and conservationists recently gathered at the University of Nevada, Reno’s Lake Tahoe campus to discuss what is known about these ecosystems and what still needs to be studied.
The workshop, sponsored by the Tahoe Institute for Global Sustainability, brought together researchers from different fields to identify gaps in meadow research and explore ways to improve conservation and restoration efforts.
“They're critical for wildlife, for water storage, for water quality. These are really unique and just biologically important ecosystems,” said Cody Reed, a meadow ecologist with Point Blue Conservation Science.
Sierra Nevada meadows are also relatively small and scattered across the landscape, making them difficult to study and leaving many aspects of their ecology poorly understood, Reed said.
According to the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, the Sierra Nevada contains more than 18,000 individual meadows covering approximately 280,000 acres.
Many of those meadows have been degraded over the years by heavy land use. Restoration projects are already underway in parts of the Sierra Nevada, but scientists say more research is needed to understand how meadow ecosystems function.
The goal is to build on existing research and use that knowledge to help guide future meadow conservation and restoration, Reed said.
