Long-term monitoring of plants in grasslands provides important information on how—and if—grassland management maintains plant biodiversity. Scientists from the Woodwell Climate Research Center teamed up with managers from The Nature Conservancy to assemble pervious datasets on grasslands of Martha’s Vineyard and to resample key TNC-owned and TNC-managed properties.
One of the challenges is to relocate former plots. That’s hard because grassland management involves mowing and burning that make it difficult to permanently mark plots. We relocated plots at the Katama Airfield that were sampled in 1999, again in the 2000s, then lastly in 2014. We also relocated plots in managed grassland north of Edgartown Great Pond along Meetinghouse Road. We coupled this resampling with establishing new monitoring locations in the Medicine Lots property in the Deep Bottom Frost Bottom south of the Manuel Correllus State Forest.
One objective was to see how plant species have changed over time. Another was to determine whether sampling in June or August provides better information on the relative mix of cool and warm season grasses (sandplain management generally favors warm season grasses and their rich association of forbs). We also compared sampling species presence and species cover in 1 x 1 meter quadrats that was previously done with sampling in 3 x 3 meter plots that are likely to capture great numbers of species and are generally better at capturing less common species.
We aim to have results of the surveys and to recommend a strategy for long term monitoring by the end of the year.
A grassland at Kanomika, near the south shore of Martha’s Vineyard in the town of Edgartown. This site has a population of the uncommon New England blazing star (Liatris novae-angliae) as well as a healthy variety of other native forbs.
Emma Ellsworth of the Woodwell Climate Research Center samples nested 1 x 1 and 3 x 3 quadrats at Katama in August 2025.