Fire Ecology And Prescribed Burning In The Great Plains

"Provides a wide look at plains wildland fire in the 21st century and how it is interconnected with other themes of life and culture in the Midwest"--Provided by publisher.

Prairie fires have always been a spectacular and dangerous part of the Great Plains. Nineteenth-century settlers sometimes lost their lives to uncontrolled blazes, and today ranchers such as those in the Flint Hills of Kansas manage the grasslands through controlled burning. Even small fires, overlooked by history, changed lives-destroyed someone's property, threatened someone's safety, or simply made someone's breath catch because of their astounding beauty. Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire-setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it-has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire. The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires-now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires. Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience-and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story. By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.

Historical evidence indicates that fires were prevalent in grasslands. In the past, big prairie fires usually occurred during drought years that followed 1 to 3 years of above-average precipitation, which provided abundant and continuous fuel. Fire frequency probably varied from 5 to 10 years in level-to-rolling topography and from 15 to 30 years in the rougher, dissected topography containing rough breaks and rivers. This paper contains basic ecological information, vegetative descriptions, and fire effects data for the shortgrass, mixed grass, and tallgrass prairies in the southern, central, and northern Great Plains. In the appendix, fire effects data have been tabulated for each species for quick reference. Prescription guides are provided for all major vegetation types where prescribed burning data have been collected. In the shortgrass prairie, grasses do not benefit from prescribed burning, but fire can be used to clean up uprooted brush, kill small juniper, and kill cactus. Prescribed fire has a wider variety of uses in the mixed and tallgrass prairies, particularly if the burns are conducted following winters with above-average precipitation. Major benefits of prescibed burning are to control undesirable shrubs and trees, burn dead debris, increase herbage yields, increase utilization of coarse grasses, increase availability of forage, improve wildlife habitat, and to control exotic, cool-season grasses. Often, several objectives can be achieved simultaneously. Prescribed fire frequency should not be more often than 5 to 8 years in a 20-inch (51-cm) precipitation zone but can be as often as 1 to 3 years in a 35- to 40- inch (89- to 102-cm) precipitation zone. Good soil moisture in the upper 1 ft (0.3 m) of soil is especially important before conducting a prescribed burn if the goal is to increase yield and palatability of forage. If control of shrubs is the primary consideration, such as in juniper country, burning during drought years may have the best long-term effect. To use prescribed fire is not as dangerous as most people think, providing it is done by experienced personnel. We recommed a minimum of 2 years of prescribed burning experience under a range of weather conditions for individuals having major supervisory responsibilities. Moreover, we recommend that supervisors be trained in planning and conducting burns and in evaluating the weather. To achieve a desired effect and for safety, one must have the skill to recognize, and the patience to wait for favorable weather.