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- Photo of the Week – June 14, 2013
- Difficult Decisions – Growing Season Fires and Other Prairie Management Choices
- Photo of the Week – June 7, 2013
- Ragwort – Prettier (and More Valuable) than its Name Might Suggest
- Photo of the Week – May 31, 2013
- Wildfire Recovery at The Niobrara Valley Preserve – Spring Green Up
- Photo of the Week – May 23, 2013
- Blowing Against the Wind?
- Photo of the Week – May 16, 2013
- Join Us For The Platte River Prairies Field Day: July 12, 2013
- Keeping a Low Profile in the Spring
- Photo of the Week – May 9, 2013
- A Prickly Confrontation
- Photo of the Week – May 2, 2013
- Capturing Post-Wildfire Recovery Through Timelapse Photography
- A Dandy Little Predator
- A Prairie Ecologist’s Perspective on Arbor Day
- Photo of the Week – April 25, 2013
- Tuning Into Fire Frequency
- Photo of the Week – April 18, 2013
Tag Archives: controlled burn
Difficult Decisions – Growing Season Fires and Other Prairie Management Choices
Would you purposefully destroy the nest of a wild turkey or grasshopper sparrow? Of course not. But what if that destruction was a consequence of a land management action that benefits the larger prairie community? That was the situation we were faced with last week as we mulled … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants
Tagged burning, consequences, controlled burn, fire, fire season, growing season, impacts, late spring burn, management decisions, negative impacts, objectives, prescribed fire, season, spring, summer fire, trade offs
20 Comments
Tuning Into Fire Frequency
HOW OFTEN SHOULD PRAIRIES BE BURNED? It’s a question prairie ecologists and managers have been wrestling with for many years. Unfortunately, research on the impacts of fire management is somewhat limited and often contradictory. Much of the best research has … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Plants
Tagged bowles and jones 2013, burning, controlled burn, eastern tallgrass prairie, fire frequency, frequency, grassland, how often prairie fire, how often should prairies burn, konza prairie, marlin bowles, prairie, prairie management, prescribed fire, repeated burning, research, tallgrass prairie
13 Comments
Photo of the Week (And Two Milestones) – March 29, 2013
Continuing with the theme of the week (at least for me) here’s yet another prescribed burn photo. We ended up burning three days in a row this week, making the week both productive and exhausting! However, just getting three consecutive days … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Management
Tagged blog, controlled burn, grassland, great plains, image, nebraska, photo, photography, platte river, prairie, prescribed fire
9 Comments
Busy Burning
I apologize for not having a pithy and thought-provoking post this week. I’m actually working on a couple different ideas, but was interrupted by a couple days of good prescribed fire weather. We had a long day yesterday and today looks like it’ll … Continue reading
Regal Fritillary Butterflies in Burned and Grazed Prairie
We’ve been conducting field surveys of regal fritillary butterflies for the last three years. During that time, we’ve learned a lot about how those butterflies are responding our prairie management and restoration work. So far, there are two overwhelming lessons … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Restoration/Reconstruction
Tagged butterfly, cattle grazing, controlled burn, fire, fire and insects, fire impacts on insects, managing prairies, patch-burn grazing, prairie management, prescribed fire, production, rare butterflies, regal fritillary, response of butterflies to fire, tallgrass prairie, viola sororia
7 Comments
The Wrong Boots
It’s not like I didn’t know. Beside the fact that our standards for protective fire gear (including boots) are very clear, I’d actually had trouble once before. When I was taking a fire training course in South Carolina, I was mopping … Continue reading
Sunflowers: Staring Me Right in the Face
It’s awfully frustrating when I fail to solve a puzzle - especially when all the information I need is right in front of me. As an ecologist, I’m supposed to be good at this sort of thing. Ecologists, after all, study the interactions … Continue reading
Posted in General, Prairie Management, Prairie Plants, Prairie Restoration/Reconstruction
Tagged annual sunflower, controlled burn, garden sunflower, grassland, grazing, helianthus annuus, nebraska, patch-burn grazing, platte river, prairie, prescribed fire, response to fire, response to grazing
3 Comments
Saving Nebraska’s Oak Woodlands… by Burning Them
Last week, I helped arrange a tour of recently-burned oak woodlands at Indian Cave State Park, an eastern Nebraska site owned and managed by Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Indian Cave State Park is one of very few deciduous woodlands … Continue reading
If You Play With Fire…
There’s nothing playful about safe and effective prescribed burning. Too many things can go wrong to take it lightly. Sometimes, I think people see prescribed fire as something that needs to be done to maintain prairies, but they can’t necessarily point … Continue reading
Posted in General, Prairie Management, Prairie Photography
Tagged bandana, burning, caution, controlled burn, drip torch, hazards, injury, objectives, prescribed burn, prescribed fire, risk, safety
16 Comments
Photo of the Week – June 2, 2011
The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve (NVP) on the northern edge of Nebraska’s sandhills is a pretty amazing place. I had the chance to spend a couple days there last week, something I always enjoy. While there, I managed to get … Continue reading
