Humans tend to view fire with mixed feelings. We enjoy sitting around a campfire, but fire is often considered to be a destructive force. Many people would view a hillside blackened by a wildfire with sadness, without realizing that for a prairie, fire is actually life-giving. Prairie grasses and wildflowers are well adapted for surviving fires. Grasses and other prairie plants have extensive root systems that allow the plant to regrow quickly if the aboveground biomass is lost. A blackened prairie hillside will be covered with new green sprouts within a couple of weeks after a fire. However, when a tree is burned it may lose years of growth. If it is not killed completely, it will take much longer to recover than the grasses, and by the time it does, another fire will come along to set it back again. Fire is an essential force in maintaining a prairie, keeping trees from getting the upper hand and turning the prairie into a forest. Fire, along with large grazing animals like bison and a somewhat arid climate, is the reason north central Texas was home to tallgrass prairie, not deciduous forest. Historically, wildfires started by lightning or by Native Americans swept over huge expanses of the prairie on a regular basis.

At LLELA, we intentionally burn many of our prairie areas from time to time as dictated for management reasons. These “prescribed burns” benefit our prairies in a number of ways:

• Burning recycles nutrients trapped in dead vegetation and makes them available to plants, stimulating growth.
• Regular burning improves forage quality for wildlife and increases the diversity of plants available.
• Fire is an important tool in controlling K-R Bluestem (a non-native grass species) and other exotic invasive plants in our prairies, as well as controlling woody vegetation.
• Prescribed burns can remove dangerous fuel loads, preventing wildfires.
• Burning can be used to open an area up in preparation for seed planting.

LLELA has been involved in research and training in the use of prescribed fire in prairie restoration since 1997, with assistance from the UNT Student Association for Fire Ecology, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Lewisville Fire Department, the US Forest Service, the Texas Forest Service, the Texas Nature Conservancy, and Prescribed Fire Solutions. We are also conducting research in the assessment and management of grass-dominated fuel models and loadings as well as in fire management in the southern plains (the thesis proposal by Maria Moreno can be read here and her completed thesis can be read here; the thesis proposal by Thad Haas can be read here). Watch an MPEG of the ignition of a prescribed fire here (3.3 MB).