Lichens in Relation to Management Issues in the Sierra Nevada National Parks 27 June 2006 Bruce McCune, Jill Grenon, and Erin Martin Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Cordley 2082 Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-2902 email: [email protected] In cooperation with: Linda Mutch Inventory & Monitoring Coordinator, Sierra Nevada Network Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks 47050 Generals Highway Three Rivers, CA 93271 [email protected] Cooperative Agreement No.: CA9088A0008 Table of Contents Introduction................................................................................................................4 Functional Groups of Lichens....................................................................................5 Forage lichens ............................................................................................................................. 7 Nitrogen fixers ............................................................................................................................ 8 Nitrophiles................................................................................................................................... 8 Acidophiles ................................................................................................................................. 9 Letharia ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Crustose lichens on rock ............................................................................................................. 9 Crustose lichens on bark and wood .......................................................................................... 10 Biotic Soil Crusts ...................................................................................................................... 11 Aquatic lichens.......................................................................................................................... 12 Other green algal macrolichens ................................................................................................ 12 Pin lichens................................................................................................................................. 14 Management Issues................................................................................................. 16 Biodiversity............................................................................................................................... 16 Air quality ................................................................................................................................. 16 Sulfur dioxide.....................................................................................................................................................17 Nitrogen .............................................................................................................................................................17 Ozone .................................................................................................................................................................17 Acid deposition ..................................................................................................................................................19 Pesticides............................................................................................................................................................19 Water quality............................................................................................................................. 19 Fire ............................................................................................................................................ 20 Grazing...................................................................................................................................... 21 Hetch Hetchy Valley................................................................................................................. 21 Existing Lichen Data............................................................................................... 22 FIA lichen community data ...................................................................................................... 22 Floristic studies ......................................................................................................................... 26 Photo points on prescribed fire transects .................................................................................. 27 Lichen biomass ......................................................................................................................... 27 Elemental analysis .................................................................................................................... 27 Lichen communities and nitrogen species in Kings River watershed ...................................... 27 WACAP lichen data.................................................................................................................. 28 Aquatic lichen data ................................................................................................................... 28 Bryoria fremontii studies at Teakettle Experimental Forest ..................................................... 28 Herbarium databases................................................................................................................. 28 Lichens on sequoia cones.......................................................................................................... 29 Lichen Inventory and Monitoring Needs................................................................ 29 Revise and update lichen inventory .......................................................................................... 30 2 Bryoria fremontii populations................................................................................................... 31 Aquatic lichen survey ............................................................................................................... 31 Montane meadow survey .......................................................................................................... 31 FIA lichen plots......................................................................................................................... 31 Recommendations................................................................................................... 32 Population status and trend of Bryoria fremontii...................................................................... 32 Macrolichen community monitoring ........................................................................................ 32 Revise and update the inventory of lichen biodiversity............................................................ 33 Quick Surveys........................................................................................................................... 33 Acknowledgements................................................................................................. 33 Literature Cited ....................................................................................................... 34 Appendix 1. Animal Uses of Lichens in Sierra Parks ............................................ 41 Birds.......................................................................................................................................... 41 Mammals................................................................................................................................... 41 Appendix 2. Nitrophiles and Acidophiles.............................................................. 42 Appendix 3. Summary of FIA Lichen Plot Protocol ............................................. 44 Appendix 4. Acronyms for Herbaria ..................................................................... 45 3 Introduction National Parks are sanctuaries set aside to preserve the components of natural ecosystems and the important ecological and life-giving processes that occur there. Research that focuses on detecting, understanding, and managing human-influenced negative impacts to natural ecosystems has revealed deficiencies in our biological and ecological knowledge of National Parks (Cole & Landers 1996; Lubchenco et al. 1991). National Park Service (NPS) Management Policies (NPS 2001a) and recent legislation (National Parks Omnibus Management Act of 1998) require that park managers know the condition of natural resources under their stewardship and monitor long-term trends in those resources in order to fulfill the NPS mission of conserving parks unimpaired. The resulting NPS Inventory and Monitoring program strives to fill in knowledge gaps in baseline data about natural resources in parks and to design and implement long-term monitoring of vital signs. The program should provide scientifically sound information on the current status and long term trends in the composition, structure and function of park ecosystems (Fancy 2004). One of the main objectives of the biological inventory portion of this program was to document the occurrence of at least 90 percent of vertebrates and vascular plants currently estimated to occur in each of the network parks, through existing verifiable data and field surveys (Wotawa 2004). The inventory component of the program addresses only vascular plants and vertebrate taxa, thereby excluding nonvascular