Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) is a key foundational
species in an ecosystem that is threatened by invasion of
cheatgrass and the subsequent increase in fire frequency.
Critical to the conservation, reestablishment, and restoration
of the sagebrush steppe ecosystem (which comprises 63 million
hectares of the Great Basin of North America) is understanding
the dynamics of A. tridentata seedshow long do they remain
viable and are they able to persist in the seed bank for any
length of time? Previously it was thought that A. tridentata
seeds did not persist in the seed bank, severely curtailing this
species' ability to regenerate post-fire. Upekala Wijayratne and
David Pyke (USGS and Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR)
experimentally investigated whether A. tridentata seeds were
able to form a short-term seed bank, a critical strategy that
would enable this species to persist despite environmental
conditions that have been altered by the invasive cheatgrass.
They published their findings in a recent iss