RANGELAND ECOLOGY AND RARE PLANT MONITORING IN WILLMORE WILDERNESS PARK Progress Report for Foothills Model Forest Project Leader Cam Lane Contributions by Michael Willoughby, Joyce Gould, Lorna Allen, Rene Bellend March 2001 Contributors: Mike Willoughby, M.Sc. Range Ecologist Land Administration Division, Sustainable Resource Development 9th Floor Great Westlife Building 9920 108th St. Edmonton, AB T5K 2M4 Joyce Gould, M.Sc., P. Biol. Botanist Parks and Protected Areas, Community Development 2nd Floor, Oxbridge Place 9820 106 Street Edmonton, AB T5K 2C6 Lorna Allen Ecologist Parks and Protected Areas, Community Development 2nd. Floor, Oxbridge 9820 - 106 St. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5K 2J6 phone 780 427-6621, fax 780 427-5980 email [email protected] René J. Belland, Ph.D. Director of Research/FSO Devonian Botanic Garden & Dept of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta Edmonton, Canada. T6G 2E1 Cam Lane, M.Sc., P. Ag. Range Forester Alberta Forest Service, Sustainable Resource Development 9th Floor South Petroleum Plaza 9915 108 St. Edmonton, AB T5k 2G8 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction 2.0 Methods 2.1 Rangeland reference area sites 2.2 Rare plant monitoring 2.3 Rare plant communities 3.0 Results 3.1 Rangeland reference area sites 3.1.1 Northern rough fescue dominated communities 3.1.1.1 Grazing effects_ 3.1.2 Tufted hairgrass dominated communities 3.1.2.1 Grazing effects 3.1.3 Slender wheatgrass dominated community type 3.1.4 White mountain avens community 3.1.5 Willow-bog birch dominated community types 3.1.5.1 Shrub encroachment 3.1.6 Aspen dominated community types 3.2 Rare Plant Monitoring - Appendix B 3.3 Rare plant communities 4.0 Discussion and Management Implications 4.1 Rangeland classification 4.2 Rangeland succession and ecological site 4.2.1 Northern rough fescue community types 4.2.2 Tufted hairgrass dominated communities_ 4.2.3 Slender wheatgrass and shrub communities 4.2.4 Aspen dominated community types_ 4.3 Range health 4.4 Rare plant monitoring_ 4.5 Rare plant communities__ 5.0 Literature Cited List of Figures Figure1. Ordination and cluster analysis of the rangeland reference areas for Willmore Wilderness Park. Figure 2. Ordination and cluster analysis of all northern rough fescue dominated plots described in the Willmore Wilderness Park in the 1980's and 1990's. Figure 3. 1952 aerial photography of northern rough fescue - tufted hairgrass community at Eaglesnest pass. Figure 4. 1996 aerial photography of northern rough fescue - tufted hairgrass community at Eaglesnest pass. Figure 5. 1952 northern rough fescue - tufted hairgrass community boundary overlayed on 1996 aerial photography. Figure 6. Foothills rough fescue-tufted hairgrass community southwest of Sundre, AB also shows a slow rate of shrub encroachment in the absence of fire and grazing over a 27-year period (Willoughby 2001). Figure 7. Tufted hairgrass-sedge at Ram River showing an 25% increase in shrub cover of over a 25-year period succeeding to a willow-sedge community (Willoughby 1998). Figure 8. Ordination and cluster analysis of the tufted hairgrass dominated sites in Willmore Wilderness Park in the 1980's and 1990's. Figure 9. Ordination and cluster analysis of slender wheatgrass dominated sites in Willmore Wilderness Park in the 1980's and 1990's. Figure 10. Ordination and cluster analysis of the shrub dominated sites in Willmore Wilderness Park in the 1980's and 1990's. Figure 11. State and transition model for the northern rough fescue dominated community types in the Willmore Wilderness Park. Figure 12. Landscape profile of plant community types across the Wildhay River valley at Eagles Nest cabin, Willmore Wilderness Park. Figure 13. State and transition model for the tufted hairgrass dominated community types in the Willmore Wilderness Park. Figure 14. State and transition model for the slender wheatgrass dominated community types in the Willmore Wilderness Park. Figure 15. State and transition model for the aspen dominated community types in Willmore Wilderness Park. List of Tables Table 1. Canopy cover of selected species in the northern rough fescue dominated community types of Willmore Wilderness Park outlined in Figure 1. Table 2. Species composition of the moderately grazed sites in the Thoreau Creek Valley. Table 3. Canopy cover (%) of selected species in the tufted hairgrass dominated community types outlined in Figure 8. Table 4. Canopy cover (%) of selected species for the community types outlined in Figure 9. Table 5. Canopy cover (%) of a white mountain avens community in the presence and absence of grazing in Willmore Wilderness Park. Table 6. Canopy cover (%) of selected species in the shrub dominated community types in Willmore Wilderness Park outlined in Figure 10. Table 7. Canopy cover (%) of the dominant species in the burned and unburned transects at Kvass Flats, Willmore Wilderness Park. Table 8. Preliminary plant community tracking list (Allen 2001) for Willmore Wilderness Park. List of Appendices Appendix A: Rangeland Reference Area Site Descriptions and photos for Willmore Wilderness Park. Appendix B: Alberta Natural Heritage Information Centre Reconnaissance Rare Plant Survey for Willmore Wilderness Park and Northern JNP. 1.0 INTRODUCTION Willmore Wilderness Park is a 4597 square riding, camping in the summer, and hunting in kilometre area in west central Alberta located the fall. adjacent to the north side of Jasper National Park and east of the British Columbia border. Established in 1959, it spans a broad transition zone from boreal forest to Rocky Mountains. Being a wilderness park, and managed under such legislation, the main use of the park is for recreation. Motorised vehicle use is prohibited within the park, however cross country skiers, hikers and back country horse users provide significant levels of traffic on the network of trails scattered throughout the park’s valleys and mountain passes. The majority of use in the park each year is during the summer and fall months. The use on the rangelands comes in the form of recreational horse use, commercial guides and outfitters, Willmore Wilderness Park is a poplar offering backcountry trail destination for many recreationalists. The increasing level of horse use in Willmore has created concern for the condition of native ranges found throughout the park. With most of the park being heavily forested, grazing opportunities are limited to the valley bottoms and moist, semi-open drainages. Trails throughout the park generally follow the more accessible valley bottoms. Traditional camping sites located along many trails are receiving heavier intensities of grazing pressure than they can presently sustain. As a result, change to the species composition and the productivity of these native ranges is occurring in some areas. The invasion of non-native species on heavily used areas and the retention of adequate supplies of winter forage for wildlife are also areas of concern. Recently, there has also been concern with the rate that native grasslands have been encroached by shrubs. This is a serious problem because most of the productive grasslands become inaccessible and less productive for both horses and wildlife. It is believed that the lack of fire within the Park has allowed shrubs to expand onto the remaining grassland community types. Bork (1994) completed a detailed classification of the rangeland resource in Willmore. It included lists of plant community types, major plant species, forage production and response to grazing pressure. At this time it was also recognised that long-term monitoring of these types was required to determine the following: range condition and trend, the effect of horse and wildlife grazing on biomass production, soils and watersheds, and to determine the successional changes on these rangelands in the presence and absence of grazing and fire disturbance. In 1998 a number of sites were established to examine the effects of shrub encroachment onto grasslands, the effect of prescribed burning on shrub and tree cover and the effect of horse and wildlife grazing on grassland and shrubland vegetation. In 1999 rare plant occurrences and an inventory of noxious weeds in selected areas of Willmore were also examined (Lane et al. 2000). During the summer of 2000 the rangeland reference areas established in 1998 were monitored and the relationship of the northern rough fescue-tufted hairgrass community at Eagles Nest, the tufted hairgrass-sedge community at Sunset Creek the slender wheatgrass community at Sulphur were compared to the 1984, 1985 and 1988 range inventory of these same community types (Bork 1994). Further reconnaissance rare plant surveys were expanded to include Hardscrabble, Rocky Pass, Jacknife Pass, and Mount Cote of Willmore Wilderness Park, and Azure Lake, Jasper National Park. As a result of these 2000 inventories the northern rough fescue-tufted hairgrass and the northern rough fescue-hairy wild rye plant community types were added to the Alberta Natural Heritage Information Centre Preliminary Plant Community Tracking List (Allen 2001) and are considered rare in Alberta. 2.0 METHODS 2.1 Rangeland reference area sites The transects established in Willmore are part of the Alberta Environment’s permanent rangeland reference area program. The rangeland reference area program administered by the Land and Forest Service was established by the Eastern Rockies Forest Conservation Board to assess range condition and monitor trend on rangelands within the boundaries of the Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve (RMFR). To date fifty-nine reference areas have been established throughout the foothills of Alberta extending from south of Blairmore to Willmore Park. These areas include permanently marked grazed and ungrazed transects. Species composition data has been recorded on these transects since 1953 when many of the sites were established. Recently, the data of many of these sites has been analyzed in order to determine the successional pathways in the presence and absence of grazing. This long-term data used in conjunction with a detailed ecological classification of the range community types will help to determine the health of the forested rangelands in the province.