This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Burn Study

Hello-
   I am new to the list and was hoping you all could help me out and
have some
opinion of the following:  (sorry this will be rather lengthy)
   I work as a Range Tech/Botanist at a local Army base here in the
Colorado
foothills. We will be initiating a burn study of some of the short grass
prairie
here on the base.  We have an area near the eastern boundary that is of
some
concern as it boarders private land and is also the "large impact area"
where they do live fire training.  The private land is currently
moderately grazed and not (to our knowledge) ever been burned. Soil
composition and is the same  for about 1/2 square mile. Here  is the
visual scenario working east to west: Private land, boundary fence, fire
break road, strip of land about 100m wide, main road, firing ranges.
   From ocular observation, we have noticed that the grazed land
(private) is in pretty good condition. Bouteloua gracilis is thick with
lots of seed heads, other grass consists mostly of Bouteloua curpendula
with some Sporobolus and Schedenardus.  Other species consist of mostly
of Ceretiodes lanata, Opuntia imbricata, O. phaeacantha, O. polycantha,
Echinocereus viridiflorus, Coryphantha vivipara, Yucca, Artemisia
frigida and Liatris. There is abundant litter and few bare patches
except for occasional gopher mounds.
   The  middle stretch of land is between the firebreak road and the
main road.  It is not grazed and has not (to our knowledge) ever burned.
Species are the same as above but in lesser numbers.  There is some off
road vehicle traffic, there is a large gopher population.  Litter is
moderately abundant.
  The firing ranges are a mess!!  The Bouteloua gracilis is thin with
few seed heads, and there is little to no litter.  Can't find any cacti
anywhere.  There is some Western Wheat from failed re-seeding efforts,
and the Kochia and Salsola are slowly taking over.  This area burns on a
regular basis (yearly or more) because of the dry conditions and the
nature of "live fire"  The  outer perimeter is also
burned as a matter of course each year because of the threat of fire
jumping the road, firebreak and on to private land.
  We figured on doing 5-10,000 sq. ft. plots in each area using
Daubenmire frames.
Each plot would have 5 transects spaced 25' apart and each transect gets
10 readings along the tape with the Daub frame.  So, each plot has 50
samples and each area has 250 samples.  Each area will be read in May
and October.  This is what we will be looking at:  Total aerial cover,
basal cover for each species, seed heads for each species (especially
grasses), litter, active erosion, bare ground, and evidence of tracking
(military vehicle disturbance),and gopher disturbance.
  Is this the best way?  Is the sample size adequate for the area we
have to work with?  Remember we need to get far enough off the edge of
the roads but in the "live fire" are we a limited to about 100m before
our access is totally banned (for good reason). Is there anything else
we should be looking at?  We also have limited time-2 wks in the spring
and 2 weeks in the fall to read these plots and enter data.
There is also a couple of other things going on here-Hydrology is very
worried about
erosion in connection with the burning, Wildlife is worried about the
loss of gophers (food for our many raptor friends) because Hydrology
wants to do major earth moving, and we are worried about loosing any
more native grasslands and are sick of the Crested and Western Wheat
re-seeding.  We ultimately would like to see
the burnig reduced to every third year if possible and small areas like
this custom
seeded.  Whew-hope this all makes sense.
Thanks for any input you can give.    Caron

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PRAIRIE
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index