In grassland areas prescribed grassland burning is a must to maintain ecosystem says Kansas State University researchers

Kansas State University researchers advise an increase in prescribed grassland burning to maintain ecosystem. They have found a three-year absence of fire is the tipping point for the tallgrass prairie ecosystem and advise an increase in burning.  The study applied 40 years of data collected at Konza Prairie Biological Station, a tallgrass prairie jointly owned by Kansas State University and The Nature Conservancy and satellite fire maps of the Flint Hills from 2000 to 2010.

Managed by the university's Division of Biology, Konza Prairie has more than 50 sections of land called watersheds -- because they are partitioned based on water flow -- that are burned at varying frequencies -- from annually to every 20 years -- since the land was donated in 1971. The areas of the station with one- and two-year fire intervals have minimal large shrubs compared to a nearby watershed that is burned at three-and-a-half-year intervals and that has lost 40 percent of its area to shrub expansion.

"In this area, if we completely exclude fire, the landscape can go from tallgrass prairie to a cedar forest in as little as 30-40 years," said John Briggs, director of Konza Prairie and one of the authors of the study. "Once it gets to that point, we are not confident that fire alone is going to bring that back."

Briggs added “There is always a conflict to burning," "Most people think that the remaining tallgrass prairie should be a fenced-off preserve. They think that it will take care of itself, but this system is fire derived and historically fire maintained. Aside from the sustainable and ecological aspects, it is critical to people's livelihoods and necessary to ranching communities."

Details appear in the latest issue of journal Rangeland Ecology and Management