Recently in Invasive Species Management in Landscapes Category
With today's interest in sustainable materials and plants, bamboo has risen in popularity, both as a building material and as landscaping material. This "grass" is definitely a plant on "steroids!"
Controlling Bamboo tips are available on the website of ...
American Bamboo Society
THIS Landscaping Society provides a wide variety of information about growing and controlling bamboo, as well as source lists and frequently asked questions and events.Controlling Bamboo: While we really are in favor of planting bamboos, rather than eliminating them, we do need to tell people how to get rid of a bamboo when somebody has planted the wrong variety, or the right variety in the wrong place. One of the most common letters we receive starts out “My neighbor planted a bamboo, and now it is coming up all over my yard. I have sprayed it with (product name deleted) and it doesn’t work. What can I do?"
The first thing to remember is that there are many different species of bamboo. In general, however, one can divide bamboos into “Runners” and “Clumpers”. The Clumpers don’t invade. To remove a clumper, just dig it out (and transplant it.) Runners can be well-behaved in cold climates, but some kinds when in a warm climate, and given plenty of water, can become a serious problem. Don’t plant a runner in a small yard in a warm climate, unless you put a barrier* around it.
American Bamboo Society
www.americanbamboo.org
This interview by Golf Digest with Robert Wood, the deputy director of the Wetlands Division, the EPA's representative in the Golf & the Environment Initiative, and an 18-handicap golfer.
Why do wetlands matter on golf courses?
Why shouldn't I be able to fill in the wetland on my golf-course project?
Wetlands are a vital part of any aquatic ecosystem. They provide habitat to a wide range of wildlife from fish, shellfish, all the way down to insect communities. Wetlands are the unique habitat for something like 30 percent of all endangered species, and 50 percent of endangered species spend at least part of their life cycle in wetlands. They're very ecologically rich.
To most people, endangered species are things like snow leopards and elephants, but there are more than 1,000 endangered species in the U.S. alone.
That's right. People are not thinking about salamanders or vegetation in a wetland. They're critically important as a habitat. And they're critically important as a filter: We build all this infrastructure to keep water clean, and wetlands provide very much that same kind of cleansing capacity in a natural way. And they provide a buffering capacity for storm events. We saw this very much with the Katrina and Rita storms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Is there a figure for the size of America's wetlands? A lot of the wetlands have disappeared.
The first statistical wetlands status-and-trends report in 1983
estimated the rate of wetland loss from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s
at 458,000 acres per year. Wetlands then were largely thought of as a
hindrance to development. In the 1991 report, which covered the
mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, we were still losing wetlands, but the rate
had declined to 290,000 acres a year. The third report, from '86 to
'97, indicated that the rate of loss was down to 58,500 acres per year.
Now the 2006 report, which covers 1998 to 2004, shows that the wetland
area actually increased by an average of 32,000 acres per year. This
was the first report to show that we were in a period of increasing
wetlands. There was, however, some issue with this report over how
wetlands were defined.
[Note: The report states that the total area of wetlands in the
U.S. in 2004 was 107.7 million acres. Wood goes on to explain that the
claim of wetlands growth has been contested. A New York Times story,
for instance, explains that over the study period, 523,500 acres of
true wetlands, swamps and tidal marshes were lost, but this was offset
in the report by gains of 715,300 acres of ponds, including man-made
ornamental ponds -- hardly a fair trade.]
To some golfers, wetlands and wild areas are just a nuisance, places
where you're going to lose your ball. They'd rather see the golf course
mowed from fence line to fence line. What do you say to them?
When you provide a bit of education, you can get a very different
answer. You can say, for example, that not mowing certain areas is
better for wildlife, better for water quality and allows native
vegetation to thrive and maybe prevents an invasive species from moving
in. It might change the look of the course a little bit and the way it
plays a little bit, maybe not. I'm a golfer, and to me what's
intrinsically attractive about the game is that you are essentially in
a natural setting. And it's the restrictions and unique features of
that natural setting that make a particular course challenging, one
that you like and remember and want to go back to. That's been a design
principle of golf courses from the beginning. It's part of the game.
One of the influential landscape architects of the last century was Ian
McHarg, who was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He came
out with a book in 1969 called Design with Nature. The
audience was really urban planners and landscape architects, but it
applies to golf courses, too. It's the tradition of the game, and we're
rediscovering that tradition.
Learn! Explore! Take Action!
Celebrate the vital importance of wetlands to the Nation's
ecological, economic, and social health. May, American Wetlands Month is also a great opportunity to discover and teach others about the important role that wetlands play in our environment and the significant benefits they provide - improved water quality, increased water storage and supply, reduced flood and storm surge risk, and critical habitat for plants, fish, and wildlife.
In organizing its activities this year, EPA is placing special emphasis on encouraging Americans to:
- Learn about wetlands. This is a great time to better understand what a wetland is, where wetlands can be found, and the importance of wetlands. Activities may include reading and studying about wetland areas, drawing maps or illustrations of wetlands, and identifying native species found in wetlands. Information on wetlands and the important benefits they provide is available on this website, through EPA's wetland fact sheet series, or by visiting the websites of our partners.
- Explore a wetland near you. Unless you live in the most extreme climate zones, there is a good chance a scenic wetland exists nearby for you to visit and explore during American Wetlands Month and throughout the year. To find a wetland near you, consult your local parks department, state natural resource agency, or the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (http://www.fws.gov/refuges). If you live in the Washington, DC area, a guide has been created to highlight wetlands and wildlife sanctuaries.
- Take action to protect and restore wetlands. Support and promote wetlands informing community members about wetlands' vital roles, "adopting" a wetland, joining a local watershed group, or participating in a wetland monitoring, restoration, or cleanup project. There are many other actions Americans can take to help conserve wetlands.To learn more about what you can do to help protect and restore these valuable natural resources in your state or local area, visit http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/awm/#you.
More than 6,500 nonindigenous species are now established in the United States, posing risks to native species, valued ecosystems, and human and wildlife health.
USGS provides the tools, technology, and information supporting efforts to prevent, contain, control, and manage invasive species nationwide.The current annual environmental, economic, and health-related costs of invasive species exceed those of all other natural disasters combined.
USGS plays an important role in Federal efforts to combat invasive species in natural and semi-natural areas through early detection and assessment of newly established invaders, monitoring of invading populations; improving understanding of the ecology of invaders and factors in the resistance of habitats to invasion; and development and testing of prevention, management, and control methods. USGS invasive species research encompasses all significant groups of invasive organisms in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in all regions of the United States.
Research components of the USGS Invasive Species Program include:
- Prevention
- Early Detection and Rapid Assessment of New Invaders
- Monitoring and Forecasting of Invasive Species
- Effects of Invasive Species
- Control and Management of Invasive Species
- Information Management
INVASIVE SPECIES MANAGEMENT RESOURCES
For a list of the most current Invasives program research projects, visit the USGS Invasive program's Highlighted Projects page.
The Invasive Species Information Node (ISIN) is a data management portal for invasive plants, animals, and pathogens in the United States and a thematic node of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII). I
The Global Invasive Species Database,
now easier to use, grants access to quadruple the number of invasive
species than when the database began.
