Finally Fire

 01 May 2011 07:26:08 pm

This past week was our first week with dry enough conditions to put fire on the ground. We had three real nice days, and were able to burn around 300 acres around the county. We’d been waiting for a long time to get the spring burn season started, so it was great to get out. Most of the burn’s we’ve done this year have been wildlife management area’s (WMA’s). These are owned by the state, so they are under DNR management. Each fire requires a certain number of people and machines depending on the complexity of the burn. So we team up with the Department of Natural Resources, and help them out quite often. Interagency cooperation is a must when it comes to prescribed fire.

I’m sure I’ve tried to describe why fire is so important to some of you before, but I think I’ll write it down again for a refresher. It will also make me look like less of a pyro. Each burn has a desired outcome that we hope is reached as a result of the effects of fire. Fire is a natural disturbance that prairie plant communities depend on. They have adapted to survive in areas with frequent disturbance. Another example of a historical disturbance on the prairie would be grazing from tatanka. Since man has settled the prairie fire has been set back dramatically. This seems like common sense. Man and his belongings are flammable, so fire = bad for us. This is certainly true, however, since the fire regime has been snuffed out this means that woody plants (i.e. trees/ shrubs) have crept further west. These woody’s are secondary successional species, that need longer to establish themselves, but once they do they are hard to get rid of. Fire is not liked by many of these trees, and that is one reason we use fire. If a hot enough fire is put through an area it will kill off much of the woody vegetation. This opens up the “canopy” and allows sunlight get down to the grasses.

Staying on the subject of grasses… Grasses can be grouped into two categories. Warm season (those that thrive and grow in our warmer summer seasons), and cool season (those that are adapted to grow in cooler seasons like spring and fall). Promoting warm season grasses is what are goal is here on the prairie. These again are the species that historically thrived in this area of the tall grass prairie region of our country.

Yes the Kentucky blue grass that we love so much is a cool season grass, and is marked for death during the spring burning season. It along with some bromes and quack grass are all exotics to the area and rob nutrients and sunlight from our warm season natives. They have not adapted to growing in areas with fire, so fire set’s them back also.

So fire gets rid of woody plants, and exotic plant species. Also the remnants of fire (the ashes) are rich with nutrients which can be absorbed once the warm season grasses kick in. So essentially fire recycles the land, and preps it for the re-growth of native prairie plants.

Farmers have a tractor, disc, and fertilizer to prepare their land, and the prairie has fire.


I hope that makes a little bit of sense to you all.

On one of our fires we had some cottonwoods that went up in flames near the edge of our burn unit. So they had to come down, we couldn’t risk them falling and potentially sending a hot ember over the fire line and starting a wild fire. So this is me in action.





That was a workout especially at the end of a long day.
Here are a few more pictures from the week that I thought were cool. I hope you enjoy.
P.S. it snowed an inch last night, so apparently it will be a couple days before we burn again.

Category : General | Posted By : paul | Comments [5] | Trackbacks [0]