RADFORD – Radford University biology professor Christine Small and a group of undergraduate students will be busy this summer analyzing, describing and classifying regional vegetation patterns found at the university’s Selu Conservancy.

Their work is part of a broader research project that will be initiated this spring by Small and biology professors Karen Francl and Bob Sheehy and geology professors Skip Watts and Paki Stephenson. The group will be investigating the role of karst sinkholes in maintaining the biological diversity of Appalachian plant and salamander communities. Karst topography is a unique landscape feature that is common at Selu.

Small recently received a grant from Virginia Academy of Science to assist in funding the project, “Classification of the Ecological Communities of the Selu Conservancy.”

“Selu Conservancy protects a diverse assemblage of forest, wetland and riparian communities native to southwestern Virginia,” Small said. “Our vegetation surveys will be used to describe the naturally-occurring plant communities of the Conservancy and to construct an ecological classification for these communities in accordance with the classification system established by the Virginia Natural Heritage Program. These surveys also will be used to examine impacts of non-native invasive plants across natural areas of the Selu Conservancy."

Small’s research program supports state and national efforts, including the Virginia Natural Heritage Program, The Nature Conservancy and the U.S. National Vegetation Classification, to document and protect Virginia’s unique species and ecological communities.

Small and Francl have worked with RU students on similar research projects over the past two summers and plan to recruit approximately seven new students this coming summer.