Looking back to move forward: using historical data to understand invasions with TJ Benson

Abigail Garofalo: 00:07

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Abigail Garofalo.

Erin Garrett: 00:15

And I'm your cohost, Erin Garrett.

Abigail Garofalo: 00:17

And today, we are here with TJ Benson, a principal research scientist at the Illinois Natural History Survey, here to chat with us all about historic trends of Illinois invasives and CTAP monitoring. Welcome, TJ.

TJ Benson: 00:30

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Abigail Garofalo: 00:32

Now we've worked with the Natural History Survey in the past. Some people might have had experience with it, some people not. So to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about your role at the Illinois Natural History Survey and just how your work connects with invasive species in Illinois.

TJ Benson: 00:46

Yeah. As you said, I am a principal research scientist at the Illinois Natural History Survey. For those that don't know, the Natural History Survey is part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, a completely research focused entity at our university. My role is primarily studying declining bird species and factors that affect their populations. My focus on invasive species comes from two sources, really.

TJ Benson: 01:12

So one is that many of these declining bird species are affected by invasive species. So invasive species fundamentally change ecosystems, and they affect the habitat suitability for some of these species. So that's that's one reason, why I focus on on this particular topic. And then another part is, in my role, I participate in a number of monitoring programs. So we have, a variety of different long term data sets here at the Natural History Survey.

TJ Benson: 01:43

One of those, as you mentioned, is the, Critical Trends Assessment Program. So so CTAP, as we call it, was set up to to monitor randomly selected sites throughout the state, and, I've been a part of that for a number of years now.

Erin Garrett: 01:56

Yeah. That's great. When it comes to CTAP, how long has that program been around? Because we talk a lot of times about the importance of data and monitoring trends over a long time period, and sometimes that's really hard to do, right, is to have that dedication, that funding, that, you know, commitment. So tell us a little more about about CTAP.

TJ Benson: 02:18

Yeah. So so the Critical Trends Assessment Program started in 1997. So it was after a time when the state of Illinois, they had a a broader effort focused on this kind of understanding the the condition of the state's natural resources. One of the things that came out of that was the need for more of this long term monitoring to better kind of understand what's going on in in natural areas throughout the state. You know, the the basic premise is that you you can't manage what you what you don't measure.

TJ Benson: 02:47

So if if you don't know what's going on, then you're you're kind of going into things blindly. So that was the impetus for the the creation of this program. And, you know, as as I mentioned before, it's it's set up as a randomly sampling natural areas throughout the state. So it's it's historically focused on grasslands, forests, wetlands, and streams as well, historically. The spatially balanced kind balanced kind of design, trying to hit all areas of the state, and to just understand kind of the average conditions and how those average conditions may be changing over time.

TJ Benson: 03:22

As you mentioned, it it is a challenge to maintain these long term programs. So, Illinois Department of Natural Resources has been great in in supporting that program. So so they supported people in the field collecting data from 1997 to 2022 with the the types of data that I'll likely be talking about today.

Abigail Garofalo: 03:43

Illinois is such a long state with, like, so many different spaces. Right? We talk about that a lot. Erin's in southern Illinois. I'm in northern Illinois.

Abigail Garofalo: 03:51

And so there's so many different conditions going on. So it's really cool to see, like, this, like, spatially distributed study with standardized sampling practices as well. Right?

TJ Benson: 04:01

Yeah. Yeah. So the main groups that that have been focused on are are plants, birds, and and insects. And all the monitoring is done by professional biologists using standardized methods that are, you know, specific to disciplines for sampling those organisms. So so with plants, it tends to be transect and quadrat based methods, and it involves identifying all of the species and estimating the abundance and cover of those species, birds, standard point count types of procedures, insects, kind of standard sweep netting types of procedures in in each sample area.

Erin Garrett: 04:39

Interesting. This is taking me back to my college days. When I worked for The Nature Conservancy, I was on a grassland monitoring team, and so we went out, and we were doing transects and identifying all the plants like you said, because we were, you know, they were actively managing these grasslands with fire and grazing, with grazing with bison, grazing with cattle, and we were trying to figure out if, like, we assume this is all good and making a difference, but, like, we need to actually have this long term dataset to see if these changes are beneficial and reaching our goals. So, yeah, definitely really great to have. And I didn't realize that this program isn't just plant based, so I'm familiar with the plant based part of it. So that's interesting to hear about the insects and birds as well. Very cool.

Abigail Garofalo: 05:22

So this program, you're assessing all of these, like, different species, different landscapes over time. How does that fit into tracking invasive species across the state?

TJ Benson: 05:33

Yeah. Yeah. So so the the sampling is designed so it captures everything. So, you know, it's it's designed so it just happens to happens to pick up those invasive species. And as I'm sure you know, invasive species aren't necessarily something you can, you know, plan for really well. There's some that have been around for a long time. We know they're there, and we wanna know things about, you know, how abundant they are and how much that changes over time. But but it's also true that you have new species that show up. You know? Some of those are accidentally introduced, some of them are intentionally introduced in some way, shape, or form, often, you know, escaping from some other place.

TJ Benson: 06:12

So a horticultural plant, for example, that finds an affinity for natural areas and starts to spread pretty rapidly. But but, yeah, those methods pick up those species very well.

Abigail Garofalo: 06:22

So when we're looking and you're assessing all of these species, invasive, native, introduced, anything in between, what kinds of patterns are standing out when you zoom out over this, like, decades long study?

TJ Benson: 06:35

Yeah. Yeah. That's a a good question. So over twenty five years, you see a really wide range of of different types of patterns. So so as far as invasive species go, you certainly do see that there are some that are relatively stable, that have been around for a long time.

TJ Benson: 06:51

For example, that they, make up a a substantial proportion of a particular natural community, but, you know, it it remains relatively stable over time. There's others that, you know, in contrast, are still very rapidly spreading. So you see some that, you know, historically, when we started this sampling in 1997, were found at a, you know, relative minority of sites. You know, maybe maybe a few percent of sites in those species now are found at perhaps 40% of sites. You know, aside from that, just kind of proportion of occurrence, the the cover of these increases as well. So you'll see the cover go up from a relatively small percentage at any particular site to making up relatively large proportions of particular natural areas.

Erin Garrett: 07:38

So that's interesting to get, like, the broad overview of the trends that you can see. Are there any specific stories of invasives that really illustrate how quickly things can change across the state or in a given region of the state?

TJ Benson: 07:52

Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, as I mentioned, there are some species that have been around for a long time and are relatively stable. So, you know, examples that that come to mind for those, if we look at grasslands in particular, we we have a whole bunch of invasive grasses that we're, you know, quite honestly, intentionally introduced for for forage, for for livestock. So things like smooth brome and tall fescue that have been around for a long time, and it's relatively stable.

TJ Benson: 08:22

The ones that are changing relatively rapidly include a bunch of different species. So a few examples of those include things like bush honeysuckles, largely in our forested environments. So those are species that, know, kind of fit that pattern that I talked about before where they start at relatively small number of sites, making up a relatively small percentage of the cover at those sites. And then over time, you know, they just increase very rapidly. So they're spreading geographically.

TJ Benson: 08:52

Those bush honeysuckles in particular is spreading, you know, from the northern part of the state southward and taking oversights, quite honestly, in a lot of cases. So they've become a real management problem. Autumn olive is another example of that that readily invades forests and grasslands, even wetlands for that matter. So you can have areas where they were absent twenty five years ago, and they're completely covered now. So they they spread relatively rapidly.

TJ Benson: 09:18

So that's a few examples. A species that we don't necessarily monitor per se, but we see the effects of, is something like emerald ash borer, which is a introduced insect that affects ash trees and effectively just wipes out mature ash trees. So that's something, again, with the the whole idea of unexpected species showing up. You know, as they started spreading in the eastern United States, we knew it was coming. But once it was here, it just fundamentally changes ecosystems. So all the mature ash trees start dying, and that just fundamentally alters those communities.

Abigail Garofalo: 09:53

That's a really interesting point you bring up though about like, it's not necessarily that you are monitoring and you saw an increase in emerald ash borers, you saw a decrease of the species it affects. Right. So like, any kind of drastic change in composition makes you ask questions about like, what's going on here? There was something was there something introduced? Is there something lacking now?

Abigail Garofalo: 10:18

Like, what is going on that has caused essentially like a whole species to collapse?

TJ Benson: 10:23

Right. Yeah. And, you know, I would add to that, you know, there's there's a lot of other examples of that too. So so insects are a good example, but fungal diseases are another one that fit into that category really well also. There's ones that are, you know, from the early twentieth century that forests look fundamentally different now than they would have back then. Our monitoring doesn't pick up those changes, but you have something like Dutch elm disease, which had already gone through and just fundamentally changed forests. And there's, you know, emerging threats too that could do the same thing.

Abigail Garofalo: 10:53

I'm curious, because we have a bird guy on. Are there, like, invasive bird trends that we're seeing?

TJ Benson: 11:00

Yeah. I mean, that's a good question. That does come up a lot. One of the things that I think is pretty fortunate about our invasive birds is they tend to stay pretty confined to areas where people are. So the examples that people think of the most are things like house sparrows, European starlings, rock pigeons as well. And, yeah, those those are, you know, largely confined to areas where people aren't. So we really don't see those getting into natural areas in any substantial way. So we're very fortunate as far as that goes. One species that was introduced on purpose that's, you know, by some definitions, I guess, could call invasive, is a ring neck pheasant, which is one that's, you know, economically important. It's a game species.

TJ Benson: 11:48

So people like to hunt them. They're kind of filling a a niche that isn't filled by a large game bird anymore. The landscapes aren't suitable for things like prairie chickens, so they've kind of replaced and and, you know, they're found in grasslands now in the state throughout the Midwest as well. But that's probably the closest thing that you would find to a non native species that's occurs in in natural areas.

Abigail Garofalo: 12:11

Okay. So like just small tangent. Would you consider ring neck pheasant invasive from your like scientific perspective? I'm just, like, curious because I feel like there's a lot of, like, emotions tied to that bird and a lot of way. You said economic importance and value. And so I'm like, does that fit the definition of invasive, or is it more like a naturalized species?

TJ Benson: 12:32

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I know. There there's value judgments that go behind these kinds of things. But from the standpoint of it's a non native species that was able to spread very rapidly, I mean, it kind of fits the definition. I I don't, you know, personally, I don't have emotional attachments to, you know, words like invasive, things like that. So that's that's one way that, you know, the the way I might look at it is different from from someone that, you know, views invasive as, you know, just this fundamentally bad thing, which a lot of times, you know, the species we're talking about are, you know, fundamentally, negatively affecting ecosystems.

Abigail Garofalo: 13:10

And then also, I just don't get to talk to bird people very often, so I have more bird questions. Are there any concerns about, like, invasive pathogens or, like, diseases or anything like that when it comes to birds that that, you know, are coming up in in some of this monitoring that's happening?

TJ Benson: 13:30

Yeah. I mean, diseases are always a concern with something that moves as widely as birds, so, you know, migratory species move diseases around. It's definitely a concern. It's not anything that really shows up in our monitoring. I I guess we don't have a really good sense of, for example, pathogens that would negatively affect, you know, trees or or plant other plants.

TJ Benson: 13:53

I don't know. We don't really have a good sense of those dynamics. So, you know, it certainly could play a role. You do see those disease concerns popping up with respect to highly pathogenic avian influenza, and the degree to which birds are moving that around, and, you know, lots of concern about should I should I leave my bird feeders out, and, you know, am I creating risk, and those kinds of things. But it's, you know, it's largely waterfowl and, you know, colonial waterbirds that have had the bulk of infections related to that particular pathogen.

Erin Garrett: 14:24

I was gonna go a completely different direction when you talked about all of the invasive grasses, because for my grad school research that I did, I looked at sericea lespedeza in southern Illinois in grasslands, and I say that because my other background was in, like, the tall grass prairie in Minnesota, the Dakotas, right, and I came with southern Illinois grasslands, I'm like, this is this is definitely a grassland, it's not a prairie.

Abigail Garofalo: 14:51

Say for our audio audio listeners, Erin held up quotations when she talked about grasslands in southern Illinois.

Erin Garrett: 14:58

But it was like, I'm out there looking at sericea, right? And then the the grasses were mostly non native also. So I was like, what is this ecosystem that we have created here? It's very interesting because it you know, if we got rid of the sericea, well, then we're left with the fescue and not so much a lot of brome down here, but other, you know, non native invasive grasses. And so it was just interesting, again, coming from a more, like, prairie remnants up north. I know we have, right, in Illinois, just not down in this area. So just kind of interesting to hear you mention that too and, like, I don't know, see how that changes over time as well.

TJ Benson: 15:38

Yeah. Well, in fact, like, if if I were to, you know, pull up CTAP data for randomly selected grasslands over twenty five year period, what you'd find is that for randomly selected grasslands, about 75% of the cover is non native species. And a lot of that is that that legacy and history of of these forage grasses.

Abigail Garofalo: 15:56

Mhmm.

TJ Benson: 15:57

And includes other things too, like Kentucky bluegrass, you know, which is we have in our yards and Mhmm. All that kind of stuff. And, yeah, it's in natural areas as well and expanding in some cases, but it's, you know, very firmly established. And and, yeah, I mean, it's it's not yeah, this is the Prairie State, and historically it was covered by prairies, but but prairies are rare now. Mhmm.

TJ Benson: 16:18

And, you know, when we look at those remnants, we we do some sampling of what we call reference sites as well. These are sites that are kind of the highest quality examples of of, you know, remaining ecosystems in the state. So those those prairies, you know, have maybe 3% invasive species cover, non native cover. And again, a randomly selected grassland's, like, 75%. It it's interesting.

TJ Benson: 16:43

From a from a bird perspective, lots of times, you have all the structural components. It provides habitat for conservation priority birds, for example. But, yeah, from the plant perspective, it's it's fundamentally different. And then, you know, likewise, for other organisms, including insects, it it's very different as well.

Abigail Garofalo: 16:59

And I feel like it's very dependent on, like, composition of those invasives, but, like, yeah, like, creates you said, Erin, like, a whole different ecosystem we've created essentially. Like, what is this space we've created? And I'm like, and what are the different interactions that occur based on that herbaceous material that's existing there? Like, how is that ecosystem specifically different than, like, a different like, the 3% grassland and and not just by plants, but by animals as well makes me kinda think about that.

Erin Garrett: 17:27

I could go down a rabbit hole now. But like real fast, the thing that I found, right, is if you wanna get rid of the sericea, you need to plant like the dominant tallgrass prairie grasses.

TJ Benson: 17:39

Mhmm.

Erin Garrett: 17:39

And that means you don't have any of the forbs, the diversity, and anything that, like, connects into, right, your insect populations and all of that. So it's like

TJ Benson: 17:49

Well, yeah.

Erin Garrett: 17:50

If you wanna manage for an invasive, then, again, what are you creating? You're creating, like, a grass monoculture. How does that impact other things? So.

TJ Benson: 17:58

I mean, that that definitely comes up. You know, most most of the landscape has been converted to other uses. And lots of times, they're trying to restore it to some other natural kind of state. So you can take those those areas that are are completely dominated by non native species and try and introduce native species. But what what you do see in those restorations a lot of time is that they're dominated by a few species of warm season grasses in particular.

TJ Benson: 18:21

So things like big bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass as well. And those will really take over. You know? And and, again, you can think about that philosophical thing and, you know, what's invasive and whatever. I mean, some of those species can really take over, and you can have just essentially monocultures that that that keep a lot of the the plant diversity out.

Abigail Garofalo: 18:43

Yeah. I feel it. And I've seen that before where, like, when you look at, like, early successional grasslands, essentially, is kinda what I'm thinking of, where, like, those species are a lot taller. Right? Like, they're like six feet tall.

Abigail Garofalo: 18:55

Right? Versus, like, when you see a more established grassland where there's lots of those forbs intermingled, like, the the grasses tend to be shorter as well, I feel like I noticed. So there's just a different physical

TJ Benson: 19:06

Yep.

Abigail Garofalo: 19:07

Makeup as well, which makes a big difference for all of the the wildlife species as well as, like, that makeup.

TJ Benson: 19:12

Yeah. It definitely does. It you know, the more heterogeneity you have, the more ability you have for other species to take advantage of that. And, you know yeah. Anytime you move towards monoculture kinds of situations, it's gonna exclude certain species.

Abigail Garofalo: 19:26

Now I'm thinking about, like, CTAP. You said, like, the randomly selected grasslands across the state. When they do that monitoring each year, is it a different, like, random selection each year? Or is it like, these were randomly selected twenty five years ago

TJ Benson: 19:40

Yeah.

Abigail Garofalo: 19:40

And these are the ones we monitor over time?

TJ Benson: 19:42

Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good question. So, you know, the idea initially was to do the spatially balanced thing and and randomly select, which ends up being interestingly, you know, you end up with about 80% of these on private lands. You know, public lands only make up maybe 3% of our state, But, you know, the the idea was that there'd be one set of sites that would be monitored over time, but the reality is that some of those get converted.

TJ Benson: 20:08

So the the basic design was was around these these five year cycles. So it it was set up that 30 grasslands, 30 forest, 30 wetlands were sampled in any given year. Then the next year, would be a different 30 of each. And you'd repeat that for that five years, but then year six, you'd come around to the ones you sampled in year one. So that you end up with both the diversity of sites that you're sampling, and you also end up with some of this longitudinal sampling of the same sites over time.

TJ Benson: 20:39

What you end up with over time is, as you might expect, forests are relatively more stable. So a forest that was sampled five years ago is is likely to be around to sample again. Grasslands and wetlands are the ones that tend to either disappear, so get converted to other uses, or fundamentally change in a way that we wouldn't call it the same ecosystem anymore. So as woody vegetation, for example, comes into these areas, a grassland can cease to be a grassland. So, you know, the the sampling program had certain certain criteria for this isn't suitable as a grassland anymore.

TJ Benson: 21:16

So it would get thrown out, or if it was converted to a crop field, obviously, it'd get thrown out. And then the random selection process would begin again within that same township to try and find another grassland. If that township didn't have a grassland, then we'd randomly select another township, search for a grassland in that one, and kind of kind of go through that kind of process over time.

Abigail Garofalo: 21:37

What is the percentage of, like, woody species that you consider still grassland in the study?

TJ Benson: 21:45

That's a that's a good question. I don't remember for sure, but I believe it was something like 50%. If 50% of

Abigail Garofalo: 21:53

Like a savannah.

TJ Benson: 21:55

Well, it's it's it's more of, like, shrubby stuff. So if Yeah. Okay. That becomes kinda shrub covered. The same is true with with wetlands too, that if it kind of reaches that point where you think it's fundamentally something different, then it it gets thrown out.

TJ Benson: 22:07

So, yeah, I mean, that's an interesting aspect too that we have long term data on, you know, what's the probability of of grasslands disappearing because of woody woody encroachment? What's the probability of wetlands disappearing because of woody encroachment as well?

Abigail Garofalo: 22:21

I'm always I think, like, sampling methods are really, like, have to be really creative. Right? Like, how are you gonna get the data, and how are you gonna make sure the data is, like has integrity? And I'm always just thinking about I'm like, yeah. You gotta be, like you can't just be, like, all hard science. Like, you gotta be, like, a little creative to find these kind of ways to do it.

TJ Benson: 22:38

Yeah. Absolutely.

Erin Garrett: 22:40

So looking overall at this program, and it's been going on for a long time, there's a lot of data that you have. How does it get used? And it could be, you know, by scientists, but also land managers, or even policy makers. How how are we seeing the use of that data?

TJ Benson: 22:59

Yeah. I mean, that's a that's a good question. There's there's a variety of different uses. So it it varies from everything, like a very site specific kind of thing of of somebody like I said, most of these are are private lands that we're sampling, but it includes lots of public lands as well. So you can have a land manager, private land owner, you know, public land manager that wants to know something specific about that site. So providing that information is is, of course, one one role.

TJ Benson: 23:27

You know, there's the larger kind of data aggregation questions about trends over time. You know, we've had lots of scientists use these data over time. That includes scientists at our university. It includes scientists at a lot of other universities as well. It's a it's a pretty unique program. It's a pretty, extensive dataset, especially incorporating that private lands aspect and and the the spatial design that covers the whole state. Like you guys said, the it's it's a big state, you know, that it covers a lot of latitudes. So it's pretty unique in that regard. So we get lots of requests for that.

TJ Benson: 23:59

And then, yeah, from a policy perspective, questions come up. So and lots of times, it's not questions that were apparent from the get go. It's questions that kind of come up along the way, and it's it's similar to the invasive species kinds of things where sometimes you don't know what the question is going to be, you know, when you start a program like that. As you get further down the line, you can start to answer those kinds of questions. So, you know, some of these retrospective questions, you know, for example, garlic mustard is a very invasive plant.

TJ Benson: 24:25

You know, it's largely in the northern part of state, but it's been spreading south, and the abundance has been increasing as well. And, you know, we've had some some scientists here that looked into that a little bit as well, in that garlic mustard has allelopathic chemicals that it gives off that negatively affect other plants and the mycorrhizal fungi that are in the roots of those plants and things like that. There's some suggestion that over time, the toxicity of that changes as invasion progresses. So as those populations get older, you see, you know, some kind of change in in how toxic they happen to be. So it's a question that that could be answered because we had this long term data set as kind of an example.

TJ Benson: 25:02

Another one was related to milkweed declines. So, you know, when this whole thing started, you know, monarch butterflies weren't on the radar screen as as being this this, you know, hugely declining, you know, pollinator that that we're really concerned about from a conservation perspective. But, you know, we can take a long term dataset like that and ask questions about, well, what what's been happening with milkweeds over time, which are are important, you know, as as host plants, as well as nectar sources for those butterflies, and and nectar sources for lots of other species as well.

Erin Garrett: 25:31

I'm curious, is the data available to the public? We talked with Rebekah Wallace from EDDMapS earlier in the season, like, is that data put into EDDMapS when it comes to the invasives? Like, how is that shared or how can people access it?

TJ Benson: 25:46

Yeah. We very freely share the information, but it it as you can imagine, being such detailed data collection at so many sites over such a long time period and also including private lands information. You know, there's there's a variety of reasons where it's not just sitting out there to kind of publicly be grabbed or whatever. It'd be really hard to work with and that kind of thing. With that said, yeah, we've always been very receptive and, you know, freely share that information when whenever we get those requests, you know, try and get it incorporated in as many of those types of efforts as we can and share it with as many people as want to use it. And, yeah, figure out a way to allow people to do that.

Abigail Garofalo: 26:21

I get that. Not something you'd want in, like, an online database searchable, but still something that like, having a gate, a little bit of a gate there to protect the data.

TJ Benson: 26:29

I mean, it's also true. You know, the the active data collection period up to now was 1997 to 2022. We've been doing some some different things in recent years. But when it was an actively growing dataset, which, you know, presumably, will be in the future as well, you know, that that presents certain challenges as well in terms of how do you how are you incorporating that new information in this publicly, facing, you know, web resource or whatever?

Abigail Garofalo: 26:54

Mhmm. So what does that look like now? You said IDNR supported it up until 2022. Where is it at now? Like, what are we looking at as far as, like, support and also, like, you said some changes, things like that?

TJ Benson: 27:05

You know, as we talked about earlier, one one of the big challenges for any long term effort is is the whole funding situation. You know, if you want professional biologists out there collecting these data at this large number of sites throughout the state, it's expensive to do that. You know, as resources become more scarce and there's more competing demands on those, then understandably, things kinda change a little bit. You know, there's a a decision that, well, yeah, we don't necessarily need to be out there every year collecting these data. To some extent, we need to step back a little bit and say, well, what you know, what's the next stage of this?

TJ Benson: 27:36

What's this gonna look like? And, you know, there's a bunch of different ways that might end up going. So there's there's a potential to seek other funding sources. There's a potential to to kind of change the visit frequency as well. So, you know, maybe we don't have to go back to these sites every five years now that we have this, you know, kind of core dataset of twenty five years.

TJ Benson: 27:54

We can build build on that in the future in different ways now. And at the same time, as I mentioned, yeah, competing priorities, other other kinds of questions come up. So one of the big ones that came up in 2023 that we kind of pivoted to working on a little bit is related to pesticide movement into natural areas in particular. So we've we've been focusing on that question a little bit more, trying to understand what chemicals are ending up in these natural areas and what the implications of that happen to be for those natural areas.

Abigail Garofalo: 28:21

So you're saying professional biologists go out and and collect this data. Are there ways that, you know, the general public audiences of this podcast, things like that, can get involved?

TJ Benson: 28:31

Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, one important way is just learning to identify invasive species. So there's a lot of, resources out there to to learn what these species are. There's programs like Master Naturalist where people can learn to identify lots of things, which is really exciting and and fun.

TJ Benson: 28:48

Participating in community science programs as well is another way that people can contribute data that can actually be used to to do something about this. So something like iNaturalist is a good example. You know, switching over to talk about birds for a second, eBird is, you know, kind of a a great example of this where people are able to contribute those observations, and scientists are able to use those to to actually answer questions. iNaturalist is a a great thing for that as well. We're increasingly focusing on data analysis methods that use data collected by professional biologists like I'm talking about with CTAP, but also incorporate community science data.

TJ Benson: 29:21

So the these integrated models take advantage of just a greater spatial coverage, and they allow us to say things about distribution of species and the conditions where they're found. There's just a lot that can be said about the the value of those those types of resources. It's also true people can, you know, plant more natives. Right? So, you know, in in their yards, you know, whether or not you, you know, have big tracks of land, even if you, you know, you have a yard, you can plant native species, which benefit native wildlife and are less likely to become problematic and end up as invasive problems in natural areas.

TJ Benson: 29:54

So that's another thing. You know, and then likewise, there's a lot of organizations that people can volunteer with. So County Forest Preserve Districts is a really good example. A lot of those have volunteer programs, and a lot of those volunteer programs involve a fairly large amount of controlling invasive species. It's become such a big problem.

TJ Benson: 30:12

It's a real strain on resources. It's a real, you know, economic problem, you know, not just in Illinois, but globally. Having help to do that really helps with those resource problems.

Abigail Garofalo: 30:22

Wonderful. Well, TJ, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about the Critical Trends Assessment Program and just monitoring invasive species, a little bit about birds too. So we are going to finish today's episode with everyday observations where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that is actually really interesting. So Erin, I'll have you go first.

Erin Garrett: 30:42

Sure. So we're recording in winter, and so I'm gonna share an observation from several years ago. But in southern Illinois, we have a lot of waterfalls, but they're intermittent. So they only flow when we have a lot of rainfall or snowfall that melts. So a few years ago, you know, we don't get a lot of snow in southern Illinois, and a lot of times we get mostly freezing rain.

Erin Garrett: 31:07

But sometimes you can catch it where you can find frozen waterfalls, which is really, really cool to observe and hike around. So a few years ago, we went out hiking and just got to get up close and personal with frozen waterfalls that you could just go up to and touch, it was really cool. Something that I don't know if people know about in southern Illinois. But if you wanna see waterfalls flowing, make sure you come in the spring when it's rainy because you don't wanna be disappointed in the summertime. There's a lot of people that come and visit and they're like, where are the waterfalls?

Erin Garrett: 31:39

And we're like, well, it's been really dry lately.

Abigail Garofalo: 31:41

It's dry season, y'all.

Erin Garrett: 31:42

We'll show you where it usually is, but really cool to see and different in the wintertime too if we get the weather conditions just right.

Abigail Garofalo: 31:50

Very cool. I feel like non Illinoisans are like, Illinois is so flat, flatlander country, whatever, and like not interesting. And I'm like, there's so many really cool and interesting aspects of Illinois. Southern Illinois is one of those really cool treasures that there's just like so many really awesome things to see. The whole state has awesome things to see, but if if you want me to highlight one, think southern Illinois is really special.

Abigail Garofalo: 32:13

So so, yeah, very cool, Erin. And listen to Erin's everyday observations to find out what those special things are because she usually just shares all of them. Alright. TJ, what's your everyday observation?

TJ Benson: 32:24

Yeah. So as Erin mentioned, it's wintertime when we're recording this, and, you know, we usually think about wintertime as, you know, it's kinda kind of bleak from a wildlife perspective. It's, you know, you don't have the same activity where you can go out and watch things like you can in warmer weather. But one of my favorite things about this time of year, there's a bunch of bird species that start breeding this time of year. So things like owls, hawks, eagles are starting to breed.

TJ Benson: 32:49

And owls in particular, they're a group that really capture people's imagination. They're secretive. You don't see them very often. You occasionally hear them. And, you know, great horned owls, they start moving around a lot in January and vocalizing a lot.

TJ Benson: 33:04

So, yeah, a a few weeks ago, I had a pair of them. It sounded like one of them was perched on top of my house, but they were calling back and forth and, you know, doing their their duetting kind of thing. And I don't know, one of the things that I I really like about that is it's it's such an unpredictable thing that it just happens sometimes, right? At night, I'm gonna hear Great Horned Owls, and it's gonna be really exciting, and kinda give me something to potentially look forward to to hearing next time.

Abigail Garofalo: 33:30

I love those, like, unexpected nature moments where you're like, everything has to stop. This is what we're doing now. Like, there was no plan for this, but this is what we're doing. So we're listening to the birds.

TJ Benson: 33:40

Yeah. When that happened, I was trying to finish reading a book, and then I obviously had to put that down and start looking out my windows and see if I could find the the great horned owls. I didn't, but it was cool nonetheless.

Abigail Garofalo: 33:50

Very cool. Yeah. Forget the book. The owls are are calling. I love it.

Abigail Garofalo: 33:55

Well, mine is just pretty observational. I've been like it's been unusually sunny around here, and I've been driving around, and we have a lot of like spruce trees planted around in people's yards. Seems to be like a pretty popular landscape tree, like tall one. And I'm just noticing, it's it's like late January, early February that a lot of the tops of the trees, when the sun hits them look it looks like the sun is reflecting off of them like lighter, but actually it's like this brown color because it's the cone. So they're spruce cones of the tree at the very tops.

Abigail Garofalo: 34:31

I don't see them nearly as heavy down at the bottom, so it's something I wanna like observe more and look into but I like my observations are like I'm seeing a lot of the cones near the top of the tree but not nearly towards the bottom, and it maybe just could be like, they're really heavy at the top, right, and there's a lot more growing there. Maybe they're just more hidden inside. I'm not quite sure yet. I have I have to investigate more, but I just thought it was really cool that, you know, the tops of the trees look almost like a different color because of those cones. So that's my observation.

Erin Garrett: 35:01

Interesting.

Abigail Garofalo: 35:02

Yeah. I don't have an answer yet. Right? If we if if we had Peggy here, she'd be like, this is why. We don't. So

Erin Garrett: 35:09

It's funny though, like, the things that you see all the time, and then you're like, oh, I wonder why. For me, it's the lower branches of the oak trees that always hold on to their leaves, and we've talked about it before. We've shared it on the podcast before, but now every winter, I'm like, man, it's just like all those lower limbs, and you like walk through the neighborhood or drive around, and you see they all have their leaves, and it's just like, interesting when you actually like pay attention. Right? When you're Yeah. Walking around or driving around.

Abigail Garofalo: 35:35

So Well, if you don't have an answer, I just love the questions that go with it, right? Like, it's like, what is beneficial to the tree to do that? Right? Like, why would that happen?

Abigail Garofalo: 35:44

Or is it just you know, and many things are accidents, right? Like, it's not like the tree was like, I'm gonna grow my leaves and keep them on on the bottom. Right? It's just those are the ones that we're able to breed. It's like, why?

Abigail Garofalo: 35:55

And so, yeah, I just think it's really cool to think about. Well, TJ, thank you so much again. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

TJ Benson: 36:02

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Abigail Garofalo: 36:03

Of course. Well, this has been another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Chris Enroth about invasives in the home landscape. This podcast is University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhouse. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.

Matt Wiley: 36:27

University of Illinois Extension.