MPF Webinar: Braided Streams of Thought: Groundwater Discharge, Wetland Plants, & Beaver Complexes

Опубликовано: 17 Июнь 2025
на канале: Missouri Prairie

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This presentation will highlight the collaboration between the US Forest Service, NatureCITE, and MDC to develop an Ecological Site Description for karst fens. This work involved building off the defined fen natural communities, but diving deeper into the literature, botany, and soils to help explain the variation and differences observed at 30 different fens within the Ozark Highlands. Presenters Kyle Steele, Justin Thomas, and Frank Nelson will also touch on interesting oversight from ecological amnesia, new knowledge on community age, and potential options for future management that may not have been considered in the past.

Kyle Steele has 19 years of post-graduate experience in applied ecology, botany, and forest science. Although he has worked in numerous ecological regions of the country, a bulk of his time has been spent in the Ozarks. He has worked for various organizations, including the Missouri Department of Conservation, University of Missouri, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. For the past 7 years he has served as the program manager for the Ecology and Soils programs on the Mark Twain National Forest. He specializes in ecological classification and mapping, coordinates various ecological monitoring studies, and provides support for forest and restoration based management on the Mark Twain National Forest.

Frank Nelson has worked for the Missouri Department of Conservation for the past 20 years with various partners to help advance wetland conservation in Missouri. He has played different roles through strategic planning, research, working with wetland managers, renovating infrastructure, and communicating with the public. He now serves as the Wetland Systems Manager in Statewide Resource Management Branch and is working to conserve and promote the full spectrum of Missouri’s wetlands, their biodiversity, and the benefits these critical habitats provide people.

Justin Thomas is the Science Director for NatureCITE. For 26 years he has conducted ecological and taxonomic research and instructed plant identification and ecology workshops. He teaches Plant Biology and Vegetation of the Ozarks at Missouri University of Science and Technology, is the co-author of the Ecological Checklist (Floristic Quality Assessment) of the Missouri Flora, and holds a research associateship at Missouri Botanical Garden. Justin takes a holistic view of systems/processes to demonstrate how the emergent properties of systems (the qualities) are more than the sum of their parts (the quantities).

Learn more at moprairie.org

This webinar was recorded live on January 3, 2023.