Controlled burns = prairie management
PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG — A controlled burn of grasslands or prairie areas is just one way to keep grasslands healthy. Staff at the Marshall County Conservation Board have received specific grassland fire school certifications to learn and practice safe methods to make fire work in a positive manner. Weather conditions must be correct for the area being managed. Temperature, humidity, and most important, wind direction and speed are factors to take into consideration. Today’s images show the beginning of a daytime fire with a slow back burning fire line eating its way into a very mild wind. This slow burn scenario is by design to maintain control by working crews. Note the green border adjacent to the fire, a fire lane mowed low the fall previous, is a tremendous help in keeping the fire where it needs to be. This week, date unknown at this time, a controlled burn at the Grimes Farm will be available for the public to safely view. The night time fire scene is from last April at the Grimes Farm. Mowed fire lanes worked as safety zones. Keep your attention on a quickly developing announcement for the controlled burn you may wish to watch.
Prairie fires were the scourge and potential deadly happenings of centuries past. Early settlers on the native grassland prairies of the Midwest sometimes had to contend with an uncontrolled prairie fire being swept rapidly by strong and relentless winds.
When weather conditions were just right, a lightning storm far away could ignite the vegetation and start a cascading wall of tall flames to develop. Anything in the pathway of the advancing flames was not going to be spared. A sod house on the prairie could provide some shelter. However, the people at that time, if they had access to a small stream or river, would purposefully submerge themselves in the water until the flames had passed. Once the fire was gone, they were free to walk back across the blackened landscape to see what might be left of their homestead. Sometimes what was left was total ruins, a loss of everything they had worked so hard to build.
We can understand the fear and dread of prairie fires. History books have whole chapters devoted to hard times of living on or near the prairie, throughout an entire year of bitter cold snowy winters and blizzards, spring green and warmer temps, summer heat and relentless winds, and then a return of subtle fall colors, mild conditions before winter cycles returned.
However, understanding how, when and why go a long way toward using fire as a tool, rather than as an enemy. Some prairie land settlers learned from Native Americans how to deal with grass fires.
For instance, if one was to see a fire line advancing, start your own fire upwind near your homestead buildings in such a way as to carefully remove the fuel (grasses) around your precious possessions. With a spot of planning and diligent work, one could create a fuel free area, and later, as the advancing wildfire came rushing in, that fire line would fizzle at your
location because there was no fuel to feed the fire. The big fire line would split off to either side and rejoin somewhere downwind.
Native Americans were excellent observers of nature. They had seen fires many times and told stories of its good and bad outcomes. A good outcome was always the renovation of the prairie plants as they sent new green shoots into the air a few weeks after the fire had passed.
Spring rains helped to moisten the soil. The dark surface after a burn allows heat from the sun to warm the Earth quickly, encouraging all kinds of vegetation to begin a new season. Refreshed pastures is one way to look at it, a reason for bison herds to return to graze on lush new grasses.
Native Americans used fires on purpose for thousands of years to help the bison herds stay healthy.
————
April is the time frame for other controlled grass fire burnings by the MCCB staff. Arney Bend Wildlife Area has some reconstructed prairie. The Klauenberg Prairie south of Van Cleve will get attention in this manner, and the backside of the dam face at Green Castle will be burned.
Fires are one way of maintaining grasses and discouraging or killing woody encroachment. A portion of the Sand Prairie complex has already been successfully fired. Smoke in the air this week will be evident in lots of places.
————
Now in our present day landscape, most of Iowa’s native tallgrass prairie has been converted to grow commodity crops. That is totally understandable as many centuries of tallgrass prairie growth, death and decay helped to build about one inch of topsoil per century.
When settlers found this deep rich dark topsoil, could plow it, and grow crops, the advance of agriculture was inevitable. Iowa’s pre-settlement landscape was estimated to be about 85 percent tallgrass prairie, 13 percent forested lands, and 2 percent as water in streams, rivers, prairie pothole wetlands, and glacial lake basins.
A census of native prairie lands remaining today pegs the number at about 1/10 of one percent. So in odd corners here and there, or in specifically set aside segments of land, native prairies are unique remnants of what once was.
Many Iowa prairie remnants exist. Many have been designated as botanical preserves just because they are so unique, special and contain a genetic lifeline to the original vegetative cover so well adapted to life on the plains.
We are fortunate to have the Marietta Sand Prairie Preserve, a rare remnant of not just a prairie but of a sand prairie. Our neighbor Story County has the Doolittle Prairie, a rich loamy soil based botanical preserve.
Reconstructed prairies exist in many places where native seeds were sown to help bring back a prairie landscape. The Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper County is one such place.
The Marietta Sand Prairie will be one site that visitors from across the United States will be visiting during this summer’s North American Prairie Conference. The dates are June 26-29. This event rotates its conference locations from the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois,
Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Iowa, and it will be Iowa’s turn to be the host in 2023. Des Moines will be the conference center with field trips of half day or full day to many surrounding native prairie sites.
Scientists and university botanists will accompany the tours, and local MCCB staff will also assist when the tour buses arrive at the Sand Prairie. There will be a field trip leader from New Mexico University, plant specialists from Iowa State University and an insect specialist from the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources.
The Marietta Sand Prairie’s original acquisition of 17 acres in 1983 was special for its botanically rich diverse species of plants. Approximately 200 plant species have been identified.
In April, an abundance of puccoon can be viewed. Golden Alexander and Marsh Marigolds are present. Other plants of note include Sand milkweed, purple lovegrass, round-headed bush clover, and later in the year prairie sage.
One can also find wild four-o’clock, spotted horsemint, sand primrose, and shaggy false gromwell. In the wet meadow grow marsh bellflower, marsh St. John’s wort, great lobelia, sensitive fern and marsh fern. In 1984, the 17-acre land parcel was designated as an official state preserve.
The land itself is the product of long periods of geologic time. Wind blown soil particles, known as aeolian sands, were piled up in dune-like accumulations after the melting of the Wisconsinan glacier lying to the west.
The time frame for wind scouring of exposed soils after the glacial retreat was 12,000 years ago, and thereafter was a continuous slow and steady deposit of sands, in some places 36 feet deep. Those sand deposits buried an ancient soil surface, called a paleosol. The result was that this ‘hard pan’ did not let water permeate through it.
Water did percolate easily through the sand deposits. Water reaching the hard pan surface would very slowly flow downslope until it was exposed on a hillside. Each of these soil profiles allowed adapted plants to thrive in each unique environment.
The Sand Prairie complex also features a fen, a very unique upwelling of water from below, and two seepage meadows. Adder’s tongue fern is just one endangered plant living within the fen. There are many others that professional botanists have cataloged. Nature has a lot to offer in her special places. The Sand Prairie is a super place to learn and visit.
The North American Prairie Conference will not be just field trips. There will be several days of presentations of scientific papers by the authors and investigators into many aspects of prairie ecosystem life.
To find an outline of this prairie conference daily schedules, look it up online and read all about the subjects to see what will be discussed. We welcome visitors to our unique natural resource locations.
Have fun while you learn.
————
A wildflower walk is set for April 25 at Grammer Grove Recreation Area located southwest of Liscomb at 2030 127th St. The hike will be from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Spring wildflowers will be abundant and in full bloom.
Woodland hiking trails will allow participants to explore a wide variety of new spring flowers. Bring a sack lunch also if so inclined.
Enjoy spring.
————
Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.
Contact him at:
P.O. Box 96
Albion, IA 50005
-
- PHOTOS BY GARRY BRANDENBURG — A controlled burn of grasslands or prairie areas is just one way to keep grasslands healthy. Staff at the Marshall County Conservation Board have received specific grassland fire school certifications to learn and practice safe methods to make fire work in a positive manner. Weather conditions must be correct for the area being managed. Temperature, humidity, and most important, wind direction and speed are factors to take into consideration. Today’s images show the beginning of a daytime fire with a slow back burning fire line eating its way into a very mild wind. This slow burn scenario is by design to maintain control by working crews. Note the green border adjacent to the fire, a fire lane mowed low the fall previous, is a tremendous help in keeping the fire where it needs to be. This week, date unknown at this time, a controlled burn at the Grimes Farm will be available for the public to safely view. The night time fire scene is from last April at the Grimes Farm. Mowed fire lanes worked as safety zones. Keep your attention on a quickly developing announcement for the controlled burn you may wish to watch.
Outdoors Today
Northern Pike eggs now in Spirit Lake hatchery
Robins adapt to March’s variable weather
Sportsman’s sale at Ikes April 5-6
Wildlife taxidermy art on display March 23
Waterfowl wonders: many species are on the move
