Rapid upwards spread of non-native plants in mountains across continents.

High-elevation ecosystems are among the few ecosystems worldwide that are not yet heavily invaded by non-native plants. This is expected to change as species expand their range limits upwards to fill their climatic niches and respond to ongoing anthropogenic disturbances. Yet, whether and how quickly these changes are happening has only been assessed in a few isolated cases.

Vegetation change over seven years in the largest protected Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie remnant.

Temperate grasslands are one of the most altered ecosystems on Earth. Consequently, conservation of important characteristics of such ecosystems (e.g.

Data and analyses of woody restoration planting survival and growth as a function of wild ungulate herbivory.

These data and analyses support the research article "Wild ungulate herbivory suppresses deciduous woody plant establishment following salmonid stream restoration" Averett et al. (2017) [1]. The data and analyses presented here include: (1) planting density, survival and growth (two years post restoration) of riparian plantings along an ~11 km stream reach in northeastern Oregon as a function of herbivory treatment (protected/not protected from wild ungulate herbivory), habitat type, and planting species; and (2) abundance and height distributions of naturally occurring deciduous woody species along the restored stream reach two years post restoration.

Non-Native Plant Invasion along Elevation and Canopy Closure Gradients in a Middle Rocky Mountain Ecosystem.

Mountain environments are currently among the ecosystems least invaded by non-native species; however, mountains are increasingly under threat of non-native plant invasion. The slow pace of exotic plant invasions in mountain ecosystems is likely due to a combination of low anthropogenic disturbances, low propagule supply, and extreme/steep environmental gradients. The importance of any one of these factors is debated and likely ecosystem dependent.

Ungulate browsing maintains shrub diversity in the absence of episodic disturbance in seasonally-arid conifer forest.

Ungulates exert a strong influence on the composition and diversity of vegetation communities. However, little is known about how ungulate browsing pressure interacts with episodic disturbances such as fire and stand thinning. We assessed shrub responses to variable browsing pressure by cattle and elk in fuels treated (mechanical removal of fuels followed by prescribed burning) and non-fuels treated forest sites in northeastern Oregon, US.