Rare Plants Love Whitewater Too!

The riparian vegetation communities of New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Gauley River National Recreation Area, and Bluestone National Scenic River represent some of the most biodiverse and rare flora with within the parks. Globally rare plant communities and dozens of rare species occur along the rivers, particularly in areas which receive periodic scouring from flooding. Riverscour prairies, one of the park’s globally rare communities, support tall prairie grasses and heliophytic forbs on cobble bars along the Bluestone, New, Gauley, and Meadow Rivers. Scour during high water events maintains these cobble bars as open habitats. Without sufficient scour, woody plants can establish, shading the heliophytic forbs and grasses that characterize this rare community. Given increasing stressors from changing climate, invasive species, and altered flow regimes, understanding how riverscour prairies are changing is increasingly important to their protection. Over the past decade, the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program has monitored these dynamic prairies, revealing shifts in the abundance of native and invasive plants, as well as the encroachment of woody plants. As a result, park staff have treated invasive shrubs at targeted sites, as well as newly-detected invasive plants that were not previously known to occur in the parks. Of particular concern in these parks is the federally listed Virginia spiraea (Spiraea virginiana) that thrives in riverscour habitats. Gauley River National Recreation Area contains the world’s largest known population of Virginia spiraea; and it also occurs just upstream of the Bluestone National Scenic River. Over the next decade, the National Park Service plans to monitor, propagate, augment, and outplant Virginia spiraea in Bluestone National Scenic River and Gauley River National Recreation Area. The National Park Service will also work to improve habitat for extant Virginia spiraea through invasive plant removal and increasing light availability in riverscour habitats.