Cheryl's Research Interests
I
am interested in understanding the relative contributions of individual-,
population, and landscape-level ecological processes, especially as they relate
to endangered species conservation. We must integrate our knowledge at all
three levels to design strategies for species protection and habitat restoration.
Within this context, three components of my research are 1) the importance
of focal species behavior in designing reserves, 2) the restoration of natural
communities to recreate habitat that meets the life history needs of endangered
species, and 3) the influence of landscape processes on ecological restoration.
The role of behavior in designing reserves for endangered species
How
should we site reserves? To answer this, we must understand how species respond
to various landscape structures. By studying the movement behavior of the
endangered Fender's blue butterfly, I found that butterflies are unlikely
to use corridors, a popular tool in conservation biology intended to connect
isolated patches, but are likely to use stepping stones (Schultz
1998). These behavioral observations indicate that, unlike many models
of dispersal which characterize habitat as homogeneous, Fender's blue butterflies
vary their behavior according to habitat-type, a behavior which is mediated
by patch edges (Schultz and Crone 2001). Combining
these behavioral observations with population viability models, we estimated
the minimum patch size for butterfly persistence (Crone and Schultz in press).
Restoration of natural communities
Do
we understand communities well enough to recreate them? In experiments to
assess techniques to restore habitat for the Fender's blue butterfly, I am
discovering that one technique, solarization (reducing exotic seeds in the
seedbank by putting plastic over tilled soil for several months) is significantly
better than other treatments (reducing soil nitrogen by reverse fertilization
or creating disturbance by tilling the soil.) This result suggests that competition
from exotic weeds is a primary factor in controlling restoration success at
these sites. Four years after sowing, solarization techniques resulted in
sufficient nectar resources for the Fender's blue at both experimental sites,
but no methods resulted in sufficient larval hostplant resources (Schultz
2001).
The influence of landscape processes on ecological restoration
In my postdoctoral work at NCEAS, I am investigating how landscape processes (such as fire, floods, seed dispersal and pollination) influence the success of restoration efforts. This research contrasts with much current restoration that focusses narrowly on sites actively being restored. For example, restoration efforts for the Fender's blue will be influenced by the proximity of sites relative to existing Fender's blue populations. I am evaluating these issues by combining maps with the location of various habitats with population biology of focal species to model alternative restoration strategies. In addition, with colleagues Elizabeth Crone (University of Montana), and Karen Holl (University of California, Santa Cruz), we are broadly investigating the role of the landscape context in influencing restoration success.
Endangered species science and policy
The test of good conservation science is often its use in applied management and policy. I am interested in how to develop science that is useful to policy and in what ways policy can become more responsive to good science. I took part in a large study funded jointly by the Society for Conservation Biology, US Fish and Wildlife Service and NCEAS to evaluate the role of science in Endangered Species Act recovery plans. Among our findings were that recovery plans often do not connect focal species biology with recovery planning efforts (Schultz and Gerber in press) but that plans which academics helped write were more strongly based on focal species' biology (Gerber and Schultz 2001).