Search this Blog
Archives
Pages
-
Recent Posts
- 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
- The Annual Grassland Restoration Network Workshop – Coming to A Prairie Near You (If You’re Near Columbia, Missouri)
- A Weekend Walk in the Woods
- Photo of the Week – April 11, 2013
- An Ill Wind…
- Is Poison Hemlock Repelled By Plant Diversity? Early Results Say Yes
- Photo of the Week – April 5, 2013
- Why A Warming Climate Is Making This Spring So Cold (… and Last Spring So Warm)
- An Exciting New Discovery – Unless You’re a Bug
Tag Archives: prairie
Keeping a Low Profile in the Spring
At times, prairies in east-central Nebraska can have such an abundance of large wildflowers, they resemble flower gardens. Early spring is not one of those times. There are plenty of prairie flowers blooming this spring, but you wouldn’t know it from a distance. In … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Insects, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants
Tagged anemone caroliniana, astragalus crassicarpus, ballooning, blooms, buffalo pea, crab spiders, early season, flowers, grassland, ground plum, lithospermum incisum, prairie, short, short growing, short stature, spring, spring flowers, viola rafinesquii, wildflowers, wind flower
5 Comments
Photo of the Week – May 9, 2013
I ran across this beautiful garter snake in our Platte River Prairies yesterday. Interestingly, it was almost exactly a year ago that I photographed a mating ball of red-sided garter snakes just a 1/2 mile from where I found this … Continue reading
A Dandy Little Predator
I took my boys to our family’s prairie today. I was only intending to stay for a little while, but they were having so much fun building forts in the trees and drawing pictures in the mud, we stayed for several … Continue reading
A Prairie Ecologist’s Perspective on Arbor Day
Today is National Arbor Day - a holiday initiated by J. Sterling Morton right here in my home state of Nebraska. The idea of Arbor Day is to encourage the planting of trees. However, as a prairie ecologist, I spend considerable effort trying to … Continue reading
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 Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Insects, Prairie Plants, Prairie Animals
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
Is Poison Hemlock Repelled By Plant Diversity? Early Results Say Yes
How important is plant diversity? Most ecologists think it’s a critical component of resilient ecosystems. Last week I collected some data that lends support to that view. In some experimental prairie plantings we’ve established in our Platte River Prairies, plant diversity appears to be suppressing the invasion … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Restoration/Reconstruction, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Plants
Tagged prairie, prairie restoration, prairie reconstruction, plant diversity, research, grassland, nebraska, data, prairie seeding, species richness, value of plant diversity, prairie planting, seed mixture, poison hemlock, conium maculatum, platte river prairie, diverse seed mixture
8 Comments
Why A Warming Climate Is Making This Spring So Cold (… and Last Spring So Warm)
Melting sea ice might not seem important to those of us living in the middle of a continent. It is. Weather and climate have always been complicated and difficult to understand, so it’s no wonder that climate change is a … Continue reading
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
Photo of the Week – March 21, 2013
Last week, I found ant species #23. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that we’re trying to inventory the ant and bee species (and others) in our Platte River Prairies. Our main purpose is to see whether … Continue reading
