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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: prescribed fire
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
Blowing Against the Wind?
As I mentioned last week, I recently spent a couple days helping our land manager, Nelson Winkel, pull garlic mustard at our Rulo Bluffs Preserve in southeast Nebraska. The invasive species has just started to invade our property within the last several years. We’ve heard … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants
Tagged biocontrol, burning, control, controlled burning, garlic mustard, herbicide, invasive species, oak hickory woodland, oak woodland, prescribed fire, rulo bluffs preserve, weed, weed control, woods
19 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
Should We Be Conducting Prescribed Fires During Drought?
As we enter a second year of drought in central Nebraska, I’m starting to hear discussions about whether or not it’s a good idea to conduct prescribed fires when conditions are so dry. I have some ideas about this, but am curious … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Plants
Tagged burn in drought year, burning, drought, dry weather, fire, forage production, grassland, management objectives, prairie, prescribed fire, safety, soil moisture, wildlife habitat
28 Comments
Lessons From a Project to Improve Prairie Quality – Part 1: Patch-Burn Grazing, Plant Diversity, and Butterflies
We recently completed a large multi-year restoration and management project at our Platte River Prairies. Our specific objectives were to improve habitat quality for various at-risk prairie species and evaluate the impacts of our management on at-risk butterflies – particularly … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Management, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants, Prairie Restoration/Reconstruction
Tagged at-risk species, burning, butterflies, conservation, conservation grazing, conservative plants, fire, floristic quality, grassland, grassland management, grazing, grazing impacts on prairie, grazing prairie, habitat quality, land management, lessons learned, nebraska, patch-burn grazing, platte river, platte river prairies, pollinators, prairie, prairie management, prairie restoration, prescribed fire, regal fritillary, research, state wildlife grant, stewardship, the nature conservancy
13 Comments
Dealing With a Pervasive Invasive – Kentucky Bluegrass in Prairies
Many of the prairies we manage have pretty degraded plant communities, characterized by low plant diversity and dominance by a few grass species – including the invasive Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). Our primary objective for these prairies is to increase plant diversity, … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Management, Prairie Plants, Prairie Restoration/Reconstruction
Tagged blanket, bluegrass blanket, control, controlled burns, grassland, grazing, how to control kentucky bluegrass, invasive grass, invasive species, kentucky bluegrass, measuring success, plant diversity, platte river prairies, prairie, prairie management, prescribed fire, rangeland, suppression
34 Comments
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 prairie management, fire, patch-burn grazing, prescribed fire, cattle grazing, regal fritillary, controlled burn, butterfly, tallgrass prairie, rare butterflies, response of butterflies to fire, fire and insects, fire impacts on insects, managing prairies, viola sororia, production
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
