Upland Habitat: Who We Are

As part of its mission to "protect, conserve, and manage Florida's fish and wildlife resources," the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) has a special program dedicated to evaluating, monitoring, and restoring the natural upland habitat of Florida's terrestrial wildlife species. This program, Upland Habitat Research and Monitoring, is essential to the FWRI mission as it is the only program that focuses on upland habitat rather than on specific terrestrial wildlife species. In short, Upland Habitat scientists maintain and restore the native ecosystems that provide food and cover for our upland wildlife species, keep our natural resources plentiful, and allow Florida's sublime lands to prevail.

The Upland Habitat program consists of highly skilled ecologists and botanists who analyze and monitor the ecological structure of FWC lands, develop and execute land restoration projects, and design research projects for the purpose of land restoration. This unique program is critical as Florida's residents and regular tourists have seen a drastic change in the state's natural areas: exotic plant species replace native plants, and agricultural operations and urban development replace natural areas. Presently, the Upland Habitat team focuses much of its efforts on the Native Ground Cover Restoration (GCR) program and the Objective-Based Vegetation Monitoring (OBVM) program.

The GCR program works to restore degraded habitat, pasture, and agricultural lands to native groundcover in order to enhance wildlife habitat and ecosystem functions. Most restoration efforts target historical native flatwoods ecosystems (many pasture lands were once flatwoods systems prior to human alteration). The goal is to eliminate exotic ground cover and replace it with a functional native ground cover base typical of a flatwoods system. Currently, there are approximately 20 projects underway across the state, ranging from the Apalachicola River Wildlife Environmental Area (WEA) in the panhandle, to the Okaloacoochee Slough Wildlife Management Area (WMA) located south of Lake Okeechobee in Hendry and Collier counties.

Restoration depends on the complete removal of exotic grasses by disking the ground and applying multiple herbicide treatments. Removal treatments are followed by prepping sites for a mineral soil seed bed, and then planting seeds of carefully chosen plant species harvested from intact flatwoods communities. After planting, the FWC monitors the restoration sites for a period of five years in order to track changes over time and evaluate the site with respect to restoration objectives. To date, fifty percent of all restoration projects have successfully established a native ground cover that is self-sustaining over the long term. Success of the project is evaluated on several factors including how well the newly planted native vegetation grows, success in removing exotic vegetation, and encroachment of bahiagrass at the edges of restored areas.

The OBVM program provides data that is essential to best manage, protect, and restore ecological structure at the WMAs and WEAs. The structural condition of several ecosystem types is evaluated, summarized, and compared to desired future conditions (DFC). Over time, trends reveal vegetation response to specific management practices such as prescribed burning, roller-chopping, and herbicide treatments. If the vegetative structure in a given WMA or WEA does not correspond to the vegetative structure that is most desirable, land managers can use OBVM data to adapt their land management strategies and thus better reach their goals. In short, OBVM provides measurable data that reflects the cause and effect relationships between specific land management techniques and resulting land conditions.

In addition to GCR and OBVM, the Upland Habitat program is responsible for many other land restoration and management projects as well as providing scientific counsel for land management decisions. Some additional projects that the Upland Habitat program is currently involved in are: a cattle grazing project that investigates the effects of cattle grazing on natural ecosystems, a natalgrass project that investigates how to control natalgrass (Melinis repens) in a scrub system, a research project on land management techniques for scrub ecosystems, and a research project on land management techniques for flatwoods ecosystems.

Reference: Guide to the Natural Communities of Florida 2010 Edition (PDF 19 MB)

Associate Research Scientist Kent Williges with
Biological Scientists George Otto and Michael Stevens in
front of Ziziphus celata, one of the rarest scrub plants endemic to Florida.

Upland Habitat Biological Scientist Amber Gardner documents
a native orchid (Calopogon tuberosus) at Blackwater River State Forest
while working on an OBVM Reference Site project.

Upland Habitat Biologists Diane and George Otto
analyze the vegetation in an OBVM transect.

Upland Habitat Biological Scientist Sarah Smith identifies herbaceous species
for an OBVM Reference Site project in the Ocala National Forest.