Tag Archives: wetland

Photo of the Week – September 20, 2012

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Last week, I managed to find about half an hour’s time to wander with my camera, so I decided to try to get some more photos of this year’s drought impacts.  I headed down toward one of our crispy brown lowland prairies, with every intention of photographing dormant grasses and wildflowers.  However, there’s a wetland swale in that prairie that has stayed wet enough during this summer that the vegetation is still vibrant, green, and blooming.  Despite my best efforts, I found myself edging toward the swale…

There were several wildflower species blooming in the swale, with lots of bees and soldier beetles crawling around on them.  But the visual standouts were the lobelias.  Both cardinal flower and blue lobelia were tall and in full flower, so I spent a few minutes taking their portraits.  It’s hard to imagine a more striking flower than a bright red cardinal flower, but the counterpoint of the blue lobelias was every bit as pleasant to look at. 

Cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis). Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

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Blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica).

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I didn’t end up with a camera full brown grass images, but in a way, these lobelia photos are equally representative of this year’s drought.  Although the majority of the landscape is dead and brown, there are bright spots of green scattered around in places where the soil organic matter is high enough to hold moisture, or where groundwater is still close enough to the surface to support life.  Those scattered oases of green are keeping a number of insects and other species alive at the moment, as demonstrated by the loud buzzing sound that surrounded me as I walked through the wetland swale.  Besides being a good “glass half full” thing to do, focusing on those oases in times of drought is probably a critical conservation strategy.  Those little patches of life are making huge contributions to the ecological resilience of our larger prairie/wetland ecosystem, and we should be studying the conditions that create them and thinking about how to ensure those conditions are sustained. 

Plus, the flowers are really pretty.

Photo of the Week – January 12, 2012

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It’s been a very mild winter in Nebraska.  We took advantage of the warm weather on Tuesday to burn a small island in the middle of a stream/wetland restoration project area.  The day was sunny, and it was 55 degrees F with light winds when we started the fire.  (Quite a contrast with Wednesday, which was in the 30’s with winds gusting to 40 mph.)

Fire backs into the wind through a grove of young sandbar willow trees. The fire will top kill the trees, but they will resprout again in the spring.

The objectives for the fire included clearing most of the vegetation from the island to create feeding and roosting habitat for migratory cranes, shorebirds, and other species in the early spring.  We also wanted to burn through the willow trees that were establishing on the island and set them back before they started to crowd out the grasses, sedges, and other herbaceous wetland plants beneath them.  The fire worked out just right, removing most, but not all, of the vegetation.

It’s not often we can get a burn done in January.  Even when it’s warm enough, the days are too short.  By the time the day warms up enough to dry out the grass and support good fire behavior, it’s usually after lunch – and by mid-afternoon, the sun has dropped low enough that fire stops burning well and smoke stops lifting.  Most of our burn units are big enough that it’s difficult to complete them during that short window of time.  The island we burned this week, however, was less than an acre in size and we didn’t have to do anything but light it and let it go.  A great way to do prescribed fire!

The island was surrounded by a wide swath of water and sand, making it very easy to control the fire (which is why I had time to take photographs!).

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The prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) on the island burned very intensely, but other areas had standing water or other vegetation types that burned less well - leaving a mosaic of burned and unburned vegetation when the fire was over.

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