Recorded Talks

A recording of a webinar on Measuring Tallgrass Prairie Responses to Disturbance Type and Timing to Improve Predictability During Restoration.

Understanding plant community responses to disturbance is necessary to improve the predictability of restoration outcomes. Although fires in tallgrass prairies historically occurred throughout the growing season, prescribed fires are often conducted in either spring or fall. These seasonal burns remove living plant material and leaf litter at different times of year, which can have different effects on how plants respond to disturbance. Because tallgrass prairie species are long-lived perennials, it can take years to see how management affects the plant community. To better understand short-term responses, we collected information about how plants grew after several years of repeated disturbance in the same season (fall mow, fall burn, spring burn, or undisturbed). We conducted this experiment in a tallgrass prairie that was restored from corn and soy rotational agriculture via seeding. We measured when plants came up in spring and how fast they grew. In a later year, we measured aboveground productivity. Here, we will discuss the results of this research and their implications for management. Additionally, input from people who do hands-on restoration work helps guide research questions that will actually be useful to managers, so we hope to discuss the mismatch between research that is being done and the information that managers actually need.

In this new, data-light, discussion-heavy format, the intent is to spend more time discussing outcomes and applications than traditional research webinars and make more space for our audience to ask questions.

Michelle Homann is a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Integrative Biology, and she studies the effects of management decisions on restored tallgrass prairie plant communities. Through her research, she has examined emergence timing, growth rate, and productivity in established perennial plants, as well as seedling emergence and survival, as responses to fire timing that could inform the trajectory of plant community change. Michelle earned her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, where she fell in love with the blufftop prairies that dot the Mississippi River valley. She spent a summer working to restore prairies and oak savannas in the Driftless Area as a Land Management Intern with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy in La Crosse, WI before deciding to pursue a graduate degree. Michelle cares deeply about addressing questions that matter to land managers and making her research accessible beyond publication in peer-reviewed journals. She will be returning to hands-on land management and restoration work as the next step in her career.

A recording of our webinar covering Prescribed Fire and Pollinators in Grasslands.

Panelists Include:

• Dr. Daniel Cariveau, University of Minnesota
• Rebecca Zerlin, MS, University of Minnesota
• Dr. Ray Moranz, The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

A recording of our a discussion on “The Ecology of Summer Prescribed Fire Regimes in the Northern Great Plains.”

In this new, data-light, discussion-heavy format, Dr. Devan McGranahan, USDA ARS, discusses his research into understanding how modern prescribed fire regimes look ecologically. He draws from two recent papers in which he 1. Looked at whether historical trends in fuel moisture/greenness and fire weather allowed for prescribed burns in summer, and 2. compared prescribed fire burn severity to burn severity in wildfires.

Communities across the central United States gain a wide range of benefits from prescribed fire, including improving forage quality, reducing the intensity of wildfires, restoring habitat for game species and rare species, and renewing a positive relationship with fire.

The panelists addressed barriers to prescribed fire, from state liability laws to agency policies, with an emphasis on ways that barriers to prescribed fire have been reduced for private landowners and those  providing technical assistance to landowners.

Panelists Include:

• Charles Stanley, Rangeland Management Specialist, Central National Technology Support Center, Natural Resources Conservation Service
• Carissa Wonkka, Assistant Professor, University of Florida
• Wes Bucheit, Missouri Prescribed Fire Coordinating Wildlife Biologist, Pheasants Forever, Inc. and Quail Forever

Abstract

Humanity’s relationship with fire continues to rapidly change and influence the distribution of grassland ecosystems. In this paper, I discuss the progression of four distinct fire eras that have epitomized people’s relationship with wildland fire in the Great Plains since the last glacial maxima. These cultural fire eras include the now-extinct coexistence era (indigenous fire use), the suppression era (extermination of wildland fire occurrence), the shadow era (localized prescribed burning groups), and the current wildfire era. I draw connections between these eras and how competition among the cultures that identify with suppression, prescribed burning, or wildfire management are likely to further influence the distribution of grassland ecosystems into the future.

Presenter

Dirac Twidwell is a Professor and Rangeland Ecologist in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska and a Science Advisor for the USDA NRCS in the Great Plains. 

Grasslands in the Great Plains and Midwest are at constant risk from invasion by woody species. Conversion to deciduous woodlands and forests is already widespread in the Midwest and the southern Great Plains. This discussion focuses on the many ways that fire is essential to grasslands and the people who live there. Panel members will address:

• the role of fire in resisting invasion by woody species;
• managing reconstructed prairies;
• promoting diverse plant communities and healthy wildlife populations;
• and relevance to people from ranching communities to urban areas.

Panelists include:

• Pauline Drobney – Prairie and Savanna Zone Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (retired)
• Matthew Garrett – Natural Resource Manager, Johnson County Park & Recreation District, Shawnee Mission, Kansas
• David Londe – post-doctoral wildlife ecology researcher at Oklahoma State University
• Doug Spencer – State Grazing Specialist – Kansas, Natural Resource Conservation Service
• Amy Symstad –  Research Ecologist and Chief of the Climate and Land-use Branch for the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center