Dr. Elizabeth Bach will talk about the long-term plant community monitoring at Nachusa Grasslands as well as research coming out from the first several years with bison. Ecosystem restoration provides potential to reverse losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Long-term monitoring is essential to understanding if restoration projects deliver on this potential. In this talk, Dr. Bach will present long-term, multi-trophic data collected across the 35-year history of the Nachusa Grasslands preserve near Dixon, Illinois.

Dr. Bach is the Research Scientist at The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands where she works with scientists, land managers, and volunteer stewards to investigate questions about tallgrass prairie restoration ecology. Her own research expertise focuses on soil ecology, exploring how below ground biology supports tallgrass prairie ecosystems through plant-soil interactions and nutrient and carbon cycling.