Northwest RISCC Webinars

Spring 2024 Webinar

Invasive dune grasses, coastal services, and habitat restoration in a changing climate

This team-up style webinar will consist of two presentations that explore the effects of invasive grasses, climate change, and their interactions, on coastal sand dune ecosystems. The talks will span the latest research on ecosystem transformation and services, to management that supports resilient habitats for native species. 

Presentation 1 - Dr. Sally Hacker: For centuries, coastal dunes have provided humans with important services such as coastal protection, carbon storage, recreation, and biodiversity conservation. Dunes form at low-lying coastal margins where sand transported by oceanic waves and wind combine with vegetation to produce dynamic backshore structures. In this presentation, Dr. Hacker synthesizes field surveys and a suite of interdisciplinary experiments to examine the role of invasive dune grasses in the landscape level transformation of US Pacific Northwest sandy coastlines over the last century. She focuses on how this transformation has had intended and unintended consequences for coastal hazard exposure and other services under a changing climate.

Presentation 2 - William Ritchie: The Leadbetter Point coastal habitat restoration project aims to remove and control invasive Ammophila beachgrass with the goal of increasing streaked horned lark and western snowy plover populations and improving their reproductive success. Both species have been declining as dune-stabilizing invasive beach grasses encroach on available nesting habitat thereby creating a new ecological regime of densely vegetated coastal dunes. Habitat restoration is anticipated to be on a scale where dynamic ecological processes of disturbance (i.e., wind-blown sand) and recolonization by a native plant community allows the ecosystem to return to a more natural state requiring limited future maintenance. Sea-level rise is beginning to impact areas of the outer beach utilized by larks and plovers forcing them to move further landward. In anticipation that some nesting birds will need to move inland, this project allows for coastal dune ecosystem retreat thus providing habitat resiliency in response to a changing climate.

Meet the Speakers:


Dr. Sally D. Hacker

Professor. Oregon State University, Corvallis

Sally D. Hacker is a Professor at Oregon State University, Corvallis, where she has been a faculty member since 2004. Dr. Hacker's research explores the structures, functions, and services of natural and managed coastal ecosystems under varying contexts of global change. She has conducted research in rocky intertidal, estuarine, and coastal dune ecosystems. Her recent work has focused on the protective role of plants in mitigating coastal vulnerability from climate change. In addition to the textbooks Ecology (Oxford University Press) and Life: The Science of Biology (Macmillan), she is an author of numerous articles exploring themes in coastal ecology. Personal webpage: http://www.sallyhacker.org 


William Ritchie

Wildlife Biologist. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Willapa National Wildlife Refuge 

Will has been a biologist at Willapa NWR since 2009 and has managed the natural resources program since 2012. His work involves inventory and monitoring of aquatic and terrestrial plants and wildlife including native pollinators, ecosystem restoration through removal of invasive plants and vegetation management, and conservation of rare or endangered species. Some habitat restoration projects include removing invasive Ammophila, Cytisus scoparius, and Ulex europaeus at Leadbetter Point, reestablishing coastal prairie on the Long Beach Peninsula, reconnecting tidal hydrology to the south Willapa Bay estuary, and enhancing conditions to promote late-successional forest on forestlands surrounding Willapa Bay. Throughout his career with USFWS and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Will has worked collaboratively with partners to achieve consensus and attain desired goals.

Winter 2023 Webinar


Horticulture in a Changing Climate: Making Garden Decisions that Prevent Plant Invasions


Landscaping and gardening can be major pathways for the introduction of invasive plants. In this webinar, we will discuss how plant invasions from horticulture can be affected by a changing climate, and we will explore resources for gardening and landscaping with native plants in the Northwest region. 


Additional Speaker and Webinar Information:


Evelyn Beaury

Postdoctoral Research Associate. High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University

Many invasive species are on the move to new locations with climate change, and horticultural trade is one of the primary vectors that could unwittingly facilitate this movement. To assess the scope and scale at which horticulture could facilitate invasion, we compared the distribution of ornamental sales of invasive plants to where these species are currently invasive and could pose future risk with climate change. We found substantial evidence that invasive species are sold as ornamentals near existing invasions, within species' predicted ranges under current climate conditions, and within species' predicted ranges under a scenario of +2C climate change. Horticulture therefore presents a major risk of spreading invasive plants under both current and future climates, and we need to expand the geographic scale at which we are managing horticultural trade to reduce invasion risk.


Linda Hardison, Director. OregonFlora. Oregon State University

Linda Hardison is director of OregonFlora, a program developing plant diversity data for the state of Oregon. Through their three-volume Flora of Oregon books and interactive website, OregonFlora’s floristic data—the taxonomy, description, distribution, and habitat of  >4,700 vascular taxa—informs multiple topics including gardening, restoration, and land management strategies impacted by rare species, invasives, human interactions, and climate change. 


Summer 2023 Webinar

Spreading Information Not Invasives: Amplifying Climate Change and First Foods Considerations in an Invasive Species Knowledge Sharing Hub


Invasive species pressures are a consistent challenge for our region’s natural resource managers and landowners. Managers tackle the environmental, economic, and cultural challenges of invasive species in different ways and at different scales, to address specific mission priorities. Unfortunately, this can result in fragmented information streams and siloed knowledge bases. 

The Oregon Invasive Species Council developed the Invasive Species Digital Information Hub to create access to resources to support both big picture planning decisions and day-to-day management activities. With a grant from the Western Integrated Pest Management Program, this project focused on the development of specific information regarding 1) impacts of changing climate on invasive species issues; 2) impacts of invasive species on culturally important First Foods; and 3) lessons learned regarding management practices shared by invasive species managers. 

In this webinar, speakers will describe the interactions between climate change, first foods, and invasive species. They will also describe how to access and use the OISC Invasive Species Digital Information Hub.

Fall 2022 Webinar:

On the Horizon: Managing the Invasion of Emerald Ash Borer in the Pacific Northwest

The team-up style webinar showcased lessons learned from the emerald ash borer invasion of North America and a discussion on proactive management opportunities for practitioners in the Northwest. 

Summer 2022 Webinar

Threats to the Conservation of Native Fish in the NW United States: RADical Approaches to the Intersection of Climate Change & Aquatic Invasive Species

The webinar showcased research on how climate change and invasive species influence the distributions of native trout as well as an introduction to the Resist-Accept-Direct or “RAD” concept and how it might apply to managing invasive species in the face of ecological transformation.

Presenters:

Learn about the presenters here 


*About 23.00 minutes into the webinar, we experienced a technical difficulty. To see the rest of Donovan Bell's presentation you can find his slides above. To see the beginning of Jason Dunham's presentation follow the link above to his re-recorded talk. 

Spring 2022 Webinar 

Risks & Regulation of Invasive Plants in a Changing Climate

This webinar showcased (1) ongoing research to evaluate the invasibility of and create risk rankings for invasive plants in Washington state and (2) how invasive species regulatory lists and weed risk assessments intersect with climate change in the United States.


Presenters:

Learn about the presenters here