Oak savanna research informs management of LCWM nature preserves
Grand Valley State University (GVSU) masters graduate Anna DeLaFuente spent the summer of 2025 getting deeply acquainted with the plant life of the Brower Lake and Bradford Dickinson White Nature Preserves. She led a team of undergraduate students in collecting data as part of a long-term research project, led by Priscilla Nyamai, professor of natural resources management at GVSU.
The students alternated the preserve at which they collected data each week, spending one week at Bradford Dickinson White and the next at Brower Lake. The students watched as vegetation shifted from spring ephemerals to late-summer wildflowers, worked while resident white-tailed deer lingered nearby, and even had a close encounter with a flying squirrel.
“It was very fun. We wore goofy bug nets, and we have a lot of fun inside jokes,” Anna said. “We all became really close friends after that.”
The project focuses on the effects prescribed fire and forest thinning have in oak savanna restoration. The data collected aims to illustrate the effects of these treatments on “herbaceous vegetation recruitment”—the establishment of new, non-woody plant growth on the ground.
“Oak savannas are incredibly endangered ecosystems here in Michigan and the surrounding Great Lakes region and the broader Midwest region,” Anna said. “One percent of the historical extent remains, which is really sad. But there’s been a lot of work recently to restore these systems and bring back some of their ecological function and promote biodiversity in these regions.”
Oak savannas are open habitats, so restoring them requires the removal of trees that cast shade and prevent ground-layer growth. This is often done with mechanical thinning—cutting and logging maples and beeches not typical to oak savannas. But this approach requires heavy machinery and can be disruptive.
The Land Conservancy of West Michigan’s stewardship team wanted to test the effectiveness of another thinning technique: tree girdling. Girdling involves removing a complete ring of bark around the circumference of the tree’s trunk. This stops the flow of nutrients, slowly killing the tree, but leaves the tree standing so it can provide wildlife habitat for woodpeckers, invertebrates, and fungi.
“We wanted to see through this project: can you combine tree girdling and prescribed fire and increase herbaceous vegetation recruitment in the ground layer,” Anna said. “And in this last iteration, we found that you can.”
As a contributor to the last set of data, Anna had the opportunity to take in the full scope of this research project. She co-authored a recently published paper compiling data from 2022 with fellow graduate student Rebecca Aguilar, Professor Priscilla Nyamai, and LCWM Conservation Director Justin Heslinga. What struck her about this restoration effort was the incremental progress over a long timeframe.
“I come from a background of tallgrass prairies—turning old crop fields into prairies. And with that, in three years you kind of have a stable prairie—not stable, but it looks more like a prairie than it does like a crop field,” Anna said. “I think that was really cool to see these small incremental changes throughout the years are making a difference compared to just an instant change.”
Anna said she also appreciated the opportunity to participate in a study that supports an adaptive approach to land management. Adaptive management is defined as a structured, iterative process of decision making in the face of uncertainty, while aiming to reduce uncertainty over time through monitoring1. Land restoration projects can take a great deal of time to show effects, and adaptive management affords land managers the opportunity to revise their strategies as new information becomes available.
This study has helped the Land Conservancy’s stewardship team understand what’s working and pose questions about what might accelerate restoration progress.
“You want your research to be impactful and actually make a difference to either someone or someplace,” Anna said.
Collaborating directly with the Land Conservancy not only helped Anna see the applications of the study; it also prepared her to enter the next phase of her career.
“A Ph.D. was not necessarily my end goal,” Anna said. “My goal was to try and get back out in the workforce and be part of on-the-ground management. I think having this study be an adaptive study has really set me up in a good position to do that.”
Anna recounted reviewing the Land Conservancy’s management plans for the Brower Lake and Bradford Dickinson White Nature Preserves, noting the balance of ecological restoration with public recreation.
“It’s a really cool intersection to see how that plays out and take some of that insight and apply it to my future career,” Anna said.
One perk of being involved with the organization during her studies was participating in a prescribed burn with the Land Conservancy’s volunteer Prescribed Burn Crew. Anna said the burn at Wege Foundation Natural area gave her valuable experience that she credits with helping her secure a post-grad job at the Forest Preserve District of Kane County in Illinois.
“I think it was a really great experience, and I think that it would be really beneficial for other future grad students to have a similar opportunity,” Anna said.
Anna has written a paper capturing her team’s data from 2025, and it is currently in peer review. She also had the opportunity to present her findings at a national conference for the Society of Ecological Restoration, where it was enthusiastically received.
The next phase of the study will look at how seeding the restoration sites with native savanna plants may accelerate progress.
1 Williams BK, Brown ED. Adaptive management: from more talk to real action. Environ Manage. 2014 Feb;53(2):465-79.