Prairie Restoration

Functional Consequences of Species Gains and Losses on Prairie Restoration

Holly Jones, Ph.D.
NIU Associate Professor of Biology

Holly Jones, NIU associate professor of Biology, won a significant National Science Foundation award in 2020. Jones, along with former NIU colleague Nicholas Barber, who’s now at San Diego State University, was awarded $703,000 over four years to study prairie restoration on a little more than a half-acre of the NICCS property site, north of the NIU Convocation Center.

Beginning in 2021, Jones will plant prairie grasses and wildflowers in 156 small test plots. This project will use a carefully designed experiment to change the number and functional traits of prairie plant species growing together and measure the effects on the ecosystem.

Ecosystems such as prairies provide important functions and services such as supporting biodiversity and providing clean water and air. These functions are driven by the plants and animals living in that ecosystem and determined by the characteristics of those species, or their “functional traits,” such as plant rates of growth, nutritional requirements and water uptake. Knowing which species are most likely to arrive or die off, and how they contribute to functions, can help ecologists predict change over time. Such information is especially important for predicting how ecosystems will respond to disturbances like climate change and for helping to understand how we can best restore damaged ecosystems.

Leveraging the project, Geology Professors Melissa Lenczewski and Megan Brown have drilled wells at the site to study the impacts of prairie restoration on groundwater. Learn more about their groundwater study on the NICCS website.