Tag Archives: prairie

Lessons From a Project to Improve Prairie Quality – Part 1: Patch-Burn Grazing, Plant Diversity, and Butterflies

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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 regal fritillaries.  The project was supported by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, who funded our work with two State Wildlife Grants (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service money).  Over five years, we conducted fire/grazing management in our prairies and enhanced plant diversity through overseeding and seedling plugs.  We measured the results of that work by measuring changes in prairie plant communities and by looking at the use of our prairies by regal fritillaries and other butterflies.

Plant diversity and buttterfly habitat were the objectives of our 5-year project.

We’ve worked hard to get plant diversity in our restored prairies, including this one.  We wanted to know whether or not our management was maintaining that diversity, and also how it was affecting butterflies.  The prairie shown here was being grazed at the time of the photo – July 2009.  The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

The following is a brief summary of the major lessons we’ve gleaned from the fire/grazing component of the project, including implications for future management and restoration work.  I will summarize the overseeding/seedling work in a separate upcoming post.  If you want more details, you can see our entire final report to the funding agencies here.  As a warning, the report is 14 pages long, with an additional 21 pages of Appendices, full of tables and graphs.

What We Did
Between 2008 and 2012, we treated over 1,500 acres of prairie with varying applications of patch-burn grazing management.  During that time, we altered the timing of burning and the intensity of grazing from year to year, and included years of complete rest from grazing in some prairies.  For the purposes of this project, we evaluated the results of our work in two main ways:

–          We measured changes in plant diversity and mean floristic quality.

–          We conducted three years of butterfly surveys to evaluate how regal fritillaries and other butterfly species responded to our restoration and management work.

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Happy New (Dry) Year – 2013

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Happy New Year!  It sure is nice to start 2013 with some moisture on the ground.  Let’s hope we get some more…

A welcome snowfall in late December will help replenish soil moisture, but it's still awfully dry.

A welcome snowfall in late December will help a little to replenish soil moisture, but it’s still awfully dry around here.  Helzer family prairie, near Stockham, Nebraska.

Ecologically speaking, the biggest local story in 2012 was the dry weather.  In fact, our nearest “large” city, Grand Island, Nebraska had its driest year on record.  The precipitation total came in just under 12 inches for 2012, breaking the previous record of 12.01 inches from 1940.  The average annual rainfall for Grand Island is about 26 inches, so 2012 precipitation was less than half of normal.  That’s pretty dry.

Back in 1940, the famous prairie ecologist, J. E. Weaver, was looking at the effects of about a decade’s worth of drought.  At the time, he and others assumed that many of the drastic changes they were seeing in prairie plant communities would be permanent.  In fact, quite a few prairies were plowed up in the early 1940’s because the owners figured that if the prairie grasses were dead, they might as well try to grow something else.

Fortunately, Weaver was wrong about the drought-stricken prairies in the 1940’s.  The plant communities he thought were irrevocably changed, and the plant species he thought would disappear rebounded nicely in subsequent years.  It’s hard to know whether 2012 was a dramatic, but short, dry spell or the beginning of another long drought for our part of the state.  Either way, it’s good to know that prairies and their inhabitants will survive, one way or the other.

Prairies look pretty dry this year.

The drought of 2012 left most of our prairies dry and crispy by mid-summer.  However, not all plants were affected equally, and some – like annual sunflowers – were able to flourish.  Other species entered dormancy early to conserve energy and moisture for the future.

As we enter 2013, the local long-range forecast is for average rainfall through the early growing season.  That would be great.  However, because we’ll start out with a significant deficit in soil moisture, our prairies will show the impacts of 2012 for quite a while yet.  And, of course, long-range forecasts are notoriously inaccurate, so we may not get the rains we’re hoping for anyway.

It’s easy to feel a little down during droughts – especially for those of us who rely on prairies for income as well as for enjoyment.  Trudging through crispy brown grass day after day can take a toll on the psyche.  However, since we can’t change the weather, the best strategy is to just sit back and watch prairies exhibit their most defining attribute…

…resilience.

I hope you have a tremendous and intriguing 2013.  As always – thanks for reading.

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2013 is off to a good start – with snow on the ground. Let’s hope that moisture keeps coming.

(Here’s a link to another interesting paper by Weaver, written in the mid-30’s before the worst of the drought had happened. Even at that time, he was already using terms such as “destruction” to talk about what was happening to prairie plant communities.)

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