What is Floristic Quality Assessment? Why do restorations and recreations of natural systems fail or otherwise hit a successional wall? Why, once a natural remnant is degraded, is it unlikely to recover its full quality? How do nitrogen and carbon drive ecological complexity and functionality? Why are qualitative attributes important and underappreciated?

After five decades of using Floristic Quality Assessment methodologies, we have learned that there is a much larger and prescient dynamism at play – a dynamism that clearly transcends the rote application of C-values to species and sites. For any place on Earth, ecological degradation is the degradation of a site’s functional history. This history is the interwoven relationships within organisms and their home over vast stretches of time and evolutionary categorization (niches), in most cases including a Holocene-aged co-evolved relationship with human culture. It is the experience of living things codified into the very fabric of their existence – genetic and beyond – as reflected by place. In this history lies the best hope for us to understand the magnitude and amplitude to which life can aspire when life is allowed to function within its own dynamic stability and singular local geography.

Only when we fully engage with the experiential relationship of place and biology, this modern analog of indigenous knowledge, can we move forward in the efficacious monitoring and rebuilding of it – and thus in the monitoring and rebuilding of ourselves as healthful contributors to the system. Why else do we study ecology or organisms? Why else do we acknowledge and celebrate their dynamism? Join Jerry Wilhelm and Justin Thomas for a day of exploring the fuller potential of Floristic Quality Assessment and how to use it as a tool for understanding and explaining ecological function beyond the illusions we have prescribed to it.

Justin Thomas is the co-founder and Science Director of NatureCITE, a non-profit, field-based, research and education organization that focuses on the interrelatedness of evolution and ecology, especially as they pertain to natural systems management. He conducts ecological and taxonomic research and teaches field-based plant identification workshops throughout central and eastern North America. An authority of Floristic Quality Assessment, he is the co-author of the Ecological Checklist of the Missouri Flora, holds a research associateship at Missouri Botanical Garden, and serves as a scientific advisor to several conservation groups.

Gerould Wilhelm, Research Director for the Conservation Research Institute, received his Ph.D. in botany in 1984 at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. His dissertation focused on the vascular flora of the Pensacola Region in Florida and southwestern Alabama. He has co-authored with Laura Rericha, the definitive compendium on local plants, the “Flora of the Chicago Region: a Floristic and Ecological Synthesis.” He is also an authority on the lichens of the Chicago region. He is also noted for his development of the Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) methodology, which has become widely adapted for use in at many states and provinces. His research efforts include explorations in our understandingng and awareness of the critical cultural relationships involved in the evolution of North American landscapes and ecosystems.

This is a one day event. Held on October 2 and repeated on October 3.

Cost is $300

REGISTER HERE via Conservation Research Institute.

High stability, diversity and quality are the most important characteristic of fully intact, fully functional natural communities and should always be the primary target of ecosystem health. In order to maintain and/or restore prairies, we must understand how prairies work and the consequences of our actions as expressed in the biota. The misapplication of fire, over-reliance on herbicide, improper grazing regimes, over-harvest of local seed, vehicular trampling, etc. can shift a site away from healthful complexity and toward degradation and destabilization. Conversely, events such as moderate to low intensity fires and minimization of disturbance can improve prairie quality, richness and functionality. This tour of prairies is designed to discuss these issues with examples, and to focus attention on the benefits of a holistic community stability approach.  Though some of the topics will be scientifically rigorous, the tour is designed for anyone from prairie enthusiast or volunteer to fully fledged professional. If you wish to understand the ecological underpinnings of prairie systems in clear terms, based on scientific research and astute observation, this is the tour for you. This one day event will consist of travel between several prairies around Sedalia, Missouri.

Led by: Justin Thomas (Science Director, NatureCITE) and Brett Budach (Research Associate, NatureCITE and Field Botanist, Institute of Botanical Training).

Meet at the main Paintbrush Prairie parking lot at 9:00am on Saturday, June 9th. Paintbrush Prairie is located 11 miles/14 minutes south of the intersection of US-50 and US-65 in Sedalia, MO. To get to the main parking lot, take US-65 south out of Sedalia for the 11 miles then exit left (east) onto Manila Road. The main parking lot will be on the south side of Manila Road and have a large MDC sign in front of it. Do not stop at the smaller parking lot on the north side of the road that you pass shortly after exiting. For easy navigation, enter the following coordinates into any maps app or GPS unit: 38.549532, -93.265197. 

this workshop is free, but requires registration. click here to register.