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Green Landscaping: Greenacres

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Greenacres: Resources for Re-Seeding

Great information about experts from government and non-profit organizations, plants native to your state and other pertinent publications. Remember; think globally but plant locally. But first.....

DISCLAIMER: (Hey, we're the Federal government. We have to.) The views and policies in the publications mentioned in this Web site are not necessarily the views or policies of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.


General Resources

Argonne National Laboratory
Center for Environmental Restoration Systems
Attention: Ray Hinchman, Ph.D.
ES - Building 62
9700 Cass Avenue
Argonne, IL 60439

Under the sponsorship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USAEC), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) developed Reveg/XD, a computer program that assists users in analyzing problems and making decisions about appropriate plant species for revegetation projects. ANL has used Reveg/XD to assist with the development of seed mixture and revegetation-species requirements for several rehabilitation projects at Army installations, as well as for routine use as a single source of extensive, species-specific information on plants.

For a discussion of Reveg/XD, refer to:
Hinchman, R.R. and W.A. Mego. Reveg/XD: A computer program for revegetational restoration. In Proceedings of the Special Session on the Rehabilitation of U.S. Army Training Lands, Second Annual Conference of the Society for Ecological Restoration, held in Chicago, Illinois, April 29-May 3, 1990. (pp. 71-92).

U.S Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service

The U.S Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service has developed the National Plant Information Database (PLANTS)

PLANTS provides a single source of standardized information about plants. It provides standardized plant names, symbols, and other plant attribute information. This standardized information permits scientists and other persons interested in plants across disciplines to freely exchange accurate plant-related information because the are all using the same plant names and symbols. PLANTS also provides a link that allows downloading PLANTS data from the state selected via FTP. The data found in PLANTS for the plants known to occur within North America were provided under a cooperative agreement by John Kartesz Biota of North America Program (BONAP) developed at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

U.S Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service Plant Material Centers: The NRCS maintains 26 plant materials center throughout the United States. Each center is located to take advantage of common characteristics of climate, topography, and soils in a given geographical area.

The NRCS program screens a large number of species used in revegetation work. Selected ecotypes are increased as technology develops, and seeds/plants are made available for field testing. High standards of seed quality and genetic integrity are guaranteed by isolating fields for each species. Computers are used to maintain accurate record on plant collections, varieties, and species viability tests. Each center is equipped with seed-cleaning facilities to handle a wide variety of native plants and to produce high-quality, weed-free seeds and transplants.

Some Plant Materials Centers work with native threatened or endangered species programs. Eventually the centers will be able to supply plants that exist in historical settings but that are currently limited to a specific historic site. The centers service specific states. See specific state resources for more detailed information.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (CERL)
P.O. Box 9005
Champaign, IL 61826-9005 Contact: Steven D. Warren, Ph.D.
Tel:  (217) 398-5455
Fax: (217) 398-5470
E-mail: s-warren@cecer.army.mil

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), National Resources Conservation Service, and National Biological Service are cooperatively developing a decision support system, VegSpec, to select plant species for land reclamation projects. Land reclamation practices for which VegSpec was developed include cover crops, critical area plantings, windbreaks, filter strips, pasture planting, range planting, and tree planting. VegSpec user is required to identify the desired practice, soil series, nearest climate station, and minimal site information to arrive at a list of plant species adapted to the site. List can be restricted by identifying specific purposes for which practice is intended, e.g., native plant community restoration. User may further limit list of acceptable plants by identifying objectives and/or constraints associated with the selected purposes, such as fire tolerance, season of growth, etc. VegSpec uses expert rules to compare combined user input and system-generated derivatives with a plants database containing approximately 1,500 species. Plants that meet all criteria are listed for user review.

After users selects from list of suitable species, VegSpec helps calculate seeding rate and evaluates mixture for potential compatibility problems. Program then helps user design planting operation. According to USACE, one version of VegSpec is complete and undergoing testing. The majority of the functionality has been migrated to the graphical user interface version, which should be available during 1996. Complete geographical information system capability should be available in 1997. 

U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
400 Seventh St., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20590.

The Federal Highway Administration publishes Greener Roadsides. This quarterly newsletter is for roadside decision makers. Articles may include articles on projects in which native plants are used, lists of publications and upcoming conferences, and other relevant information.

 


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