Adaptive management is a critical tool in innovative resolution for long standing Vista Conflicts. "Habitat Transition" is a Green Strategy allowing vista relief by establishing diverse, lower growing habitat, avoiding stresses to vegetation through repetitive trimming.
Images by Safe Harbor: showing stages of successful habitat transition in long standing Vista Conflict area.
Habitat Transition Using Adaptive Management
Gordon Peabody, Safe Harbor Environmental Management, 2017 Contact: 508-237-3724 gordonpeabody@gmail.com
Sandplain Grasslands are considered “Globally Endangered Habitats”. Safe Harbor has a project to transition existing invasive and native vegetation to a Sandplain Grassland habitat on the coastal bluffs of Brewster, MA.. Plans and protocols for this habitat transition have been reviewed, approved and conditioned by Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection under the Wetlands Protection Act (310.10 CMR) and by the Town of Brewster Conservation Commission under local Wetlands Protection Bylaws (DEP # SE 09-1491, AOOC).
This project will utilize adaptive management strategies. The approved vegetation for this transition will be planted in species specific subsets, within a diverse matrix. Vegetation subject to mortality may not need to be replaced. The goal of adaptive management is to respond to surprise factors of uncertainty by supporting changing relationships between the abundance and diversity of vegetation within the interactive ecological community of insects, birds and small mammals. Supporting this complex matrix of emerging inter-relationships, defines a more necessary evolutionary pathway towards sustainable Sandplain Grassland habitat.
Adaptivemanagement tools need to carefully de-select synoptic assessments in favor of more comprehensive evaluation of system performance. Tools may include species: shifting; reorganizing; adding; removing; adjusting location, abundance and/or diversity within the emergent SPGL community. Decisions will be based on early and continuing assessment of survivability and competition within the SPGL community, under normal and anomalous stress levels (mortality, predation, moisture, temperature). Habitat transitions are ongoing, multi-year projects where sustainable goals evolve through the rebalancing of ecological energy. SPGL habitats are defined by internal linkages between species and externally by linkages to scale with adjacent habitats. Safe Harbor uses collaborative assessments in the development of adaptive management strategies.
