LLL prescribed burn 25 July 2018

The Llano Estacado is a landscape shaped by fire. Grassland needs grazers and fire to remain grassland. We shot the bison, smothered the fire, and created our brush troubles. We'll save cattle for another post. If we want to restore the prairie, we MUST restore fire.

Prescribed burning has been used for a few decades now, and both the art and the science of it improves each year. We know prescribed fire restores prairie. We know prescribed fire prevents wildfire.

Lubbock Lake Landmark conducted a prescribed burn on 25 June 2018 for a prescribed burning training, and for prairie maintenance.

The burn unit was ~34 acres on the north end of the preserve.

That is certainly a small fire by rangeland standards, but it represents perhaps a 10th of the preserve. The land stewards at LLL have used prescribed fire for many years now, and this rotation of fire throughout the preserve is a perfect small scale example of how the Llano Estacado could look with proper stewardship.

On the day of the fire, both black-tailed jackrabbits and Texas horned lizards were observed in the black following the burn.

Before

Conditions:
Surface winds: ~4-9 SE
Transport winds ~7-9 SE- S
Mixing Height ~11,000 ft
1 HR fuel moisture 1: 6%
1 HR fuel moisture 2: 9.8%
RH: ~24-30%
Temp ~78- 86 F

Twenty-Four Hours Later

The associated observations were 24 hours after the burn, following a 0.04 inch shower.

There were a ton of western kingbirds ( Tyrannus verticalis) in the burn unit As well as rabbits, mockingbirds, killdeer, and a ton of harvester ants.

Photo points:

If I have time, I'm going to try to follow this up in the coming weeks.

*I am not associated with LLL in any form. While I was a participant in the prescribed burn training, I am just a naturalist out observing on my own time.

Posted on July 27, 2018 12:33 PM by rowdius