Pollinators of the Great Plains: Disturbances, Stressors, Management, and Research Needs #pollinators #grasslands #rxfire #grazing

"Pollinators of the Great Plains: Disturbances, Stressors, Management, and Research Needs"

This open access article was published online September 16, 2020, in the journal Rangeland Ecology and Management.

Access the article through the permanent web address (DOI) (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2020.08.006)

Abstract

Recent global declines of pollinator populations have highlighted the importance of pollinators, which are undervalued despite essential contributions to ecosystem services. To identify critical knowledge gaps about pollinators, we describe the state of knowledge about responses of pollinators and their foraging and nesting resources to historical natural disturbances and new stressors in Great Plains grasslands and riparian ecosystems. In addition, we also provide information about pollinator management and research needs to guide efforts to sustain pollinators and by extension, flowering vegetation, and other ecosystem services of grasslands.

Although pollinator responses varied, pollinator specialists of disturbance-sensitive plants tended to decline in response to disturbance. Management with grazing and fire overall may benefit pollinators of grasslands, depending on many factors; however, we recommend habitat and population monitoring to assess outcomes of these disturbances on small, isolated pollinator populations.

The influences and interactions of drought and increasingly variable weather patterns, pesticides, and domesticated bees on pollinators are complex and understudied. Nonetheless, habitat management and restoration can reduce effects of stressors and augment floral and nesting resources for pollinators.

Research needs include expanding information about 1) the distribution, abundance, trends, and intraregional variability of most pollinator species; 2) floral and nesting resources critical to support pollinators; 3) implications of different rangeland management approaches; 4) effects of missing and reestablished resources in altered and restored vegetation; and 5) disentangling the relative influence of interacting disturbances and stressors on pollinator declines.

Despite limited research in the Great Plains on many of these topics, consideration of pollinator populations and their habitat needs in management plans is critical now to reduce future pollinator declines and promote recovery.

Keywords: climate; fire; grazing; Great Plains; herbivory; pesticides; pollinators

Citation

Hanberry, Brice B., Sandra J. DeBano, Thomas N. Kaye, Mary M. Rowland, Cynthia R. Hartway, and Donna Shorrock. "Pollinators of the Great Plains: disturbances, stressors, management, and research needs." Rangeland Ecology & Management 78 (2021): 220-234.

The Birds and the Bees: Producing Beef and Conservation Benefits on Working Grasslands #rxfire #capacity

The Birds and the Bees: Producing Beef and Conservation Benefits on Working Grasslands

This open access article was published Aug. 17, 2022, in the journal Agronomy.

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Abstract

Globally, grasslands have been heavily degraded, more so than any other biome. Grasslands of the eastern U.S. are no exception to this trend and, consequently, native biota associated with the region’s >20 million ha of agricultural grasslands are under considerable stress. For example, grassland associated breeding bird populations have declined precipitously in recent decades as have numerous species of pollinators. Although there is increasing awareness of the role grasslands can play in global carbon cycles and in providing high quality dietary proteins needed by an increasing global population, there is a lack of awareness of the alarming trends in the sustainability of the native biota of these ecosystems. Here, we present the status of this conservation challenge and offer prospective solutions through a working lands conservation approach. Such a strategy entails maintaining appropriate disturbances (i.e., grazing, fire, and their combination), improved grazing management, an increased reliance on native grasses and forbs, and improved plant diversity within pastures. Furthermore, we note some examples of opportunities to achieve these goals, offer suggestions for agricultural and conservation policy, and provide a framework for evaluating tradeoffs that are inevitably required when pursuing a multi-purpose grassland management framework.

Keywords: biodiversity; breeding birds; grazing; native grasses; pollinators; sustainability; working lands conservation

Citation

Keyser, Patrick D., David A. Buehler, John H. Fike, Deborah L. Finke, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, James A. Martin, Harley D. Naumann, and S. Ray Smith. "The Birds and the Bees: Producing Beef and Conservation Benefits on Working Grasslands." Agronomy 12, no. 8 (2022): 1934.

Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part II: Critical Review of Presently Used and Potentially Expandable Solutions #rxfire #capacity

Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part II: Critical Review of Presently Used and Potentially Expandable Solutions

This open-access article was published in the journal Land on Sept. 9, 2022. This article can be downloaded for free from the US Forest Service Treesearch database.

Abstract

This is the second paper of a two-part series on the barriers to prescribed fire use in the Great Plains of the USA. While the first part presented a systematic review of published papers on the barriers to prescribed fire use, specifically regarding perceptions and attitudes of land managers, this second part reviews the solutions that are employed to increase prescribed fire use by land managers in the Great Plains. First, the review compiled the solutions currently and ubiquitously employed to promote fire use and how they have been documented to address barriers. Second, potentially expandable solutions used in similar natural resource fields and communities were reviewed as possible solutions to the unaddressed aspects of remaining barriers that limit fire use.

Keywords: prescribed fire; prescribed burn association; socio-ecological

Citation

Clark, Autumn S., Devan Allen McGranahan, Benjamin A. Geaumont, Carissa L. Wonkka, Jacqueline P. Ott, and Urs P. Kreuter. "Barriers to prescribed fire in the US Great Plains, Part II: Critical review of presently used and potentially expandable solutions." Land 11, no. 9 (2022): 1524.

Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part I: Systematic Review of Socio-Ecological Research #rxfire #barriers #capacity

Barriers to Prescribed Fire in the US Great Plains, Part I: Systematic Review of Socio-Ecological Research

This article was published in the journal Land on Sept. 9, 2022. This article can be downloaded for free from the US Forest Service Treesearch database.

Abstract

Prescribed fire is increasingly being considered as a viable management tool by public and private land managers. Fully expanding prescribed fire use in a land management context, where it is an ecologically effective but not commonly applied tool, requires a comprehensive understanding of barriers that limit prescribed fire, especially in working rangelands of the North American Great Plains. While there is an emerging body of work on the perceptions of prescribed fire, there has yet to be a compilation of the research. We present a systematic review of the published literature on the perceptions and attitudes of land managers towards prescribed fire in the Great Plains in an effort to provide a social-ecological perspective on the issue. The aim is to share the methods used to assess social perceptions of prescribed fire in the Great Plains and regional distribution of these studies as well as to identify perceived barriers and limitations that restrict the use of prescribed fire by reviewing studies primarily located in the Great Plains ecoregion and focused on perceptions of fire. Surveys were the most commonly used method to assess social perceptions, with most research concentrated in the southern Great Plains. Barriers included a range of social, informational, practical, and regulatory concerns. This compilation of research synthesizes the current knowledge regarding social perceptions of and potential barriers to prescribed fire use so that fire practitioners and communities considering prescribed fire use for rangeland management have the most current information to make sound decisions.

Keywords: prescribed fire; landowner perception; rangelands; socio-ecological; capacity

Citation

Clark, Autumn S., Devan Allen McGranahan, Benjamin A. Geaumont, Carissa L. Wonkka, Jacqueline P. Ott, and Urs P. Kreuter. "Barriers to prescribed fire in the US Great Plains, Part I: Systematic review of socio-ecological research." Land 11, no. 9 (2022): 1521.

Pyrodiversity in a warming world: research challenges and opportunities

"Pyrodiversity in a warming world: research challenges and opportunities"

This article was published on Aug. 15, 2022, in the journal Current Landscape Ecology Reports. This article is available to download for free from the USDA Forest Service’s Treesearch database.

Abstract

Purpose of Review
Climate change will continue to alter spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics, or pyrodiversity. The causes of pyrodiversity and its consequences for biological communities are emerging as a promising research area with great potential for understanding and predicting global change. We reviewed the literature related to the causes and consequences of pyrodiversity over the 3-year period 2019–2021 to identify emerging themes and innovations.

Recent Findings
Key innovations include multi-scale analyses of pyrodiversity, a focus on mechanisms underlying single-species responses to pyrodiversity, investigating how pyrodiversity influences community stability and beta-diversity, and novel, integrative approaches for measuring pyrodiversity.

Summary
Pyrodiversity research is still maturing, and will benefit from exploration of multi-scale, gradient analysis of integrated (multi-measure) pyrodiversity metrics, an increased focus on how climate change may influence pyrodiversity across different systems, and a stronger framework for operational pyrodiversity within the context of land management. We suggest that research focusing on pyrodiversity could be generalized to include “turbadiversity,” or the cumulative patterns of heterogeneity produced by multiple types of disturbances (i.e., not just fire).

Keywords: pyrodiversity;  biodiversity; climate change; multi-scale; fire management; landscape ecology

Citation

Jones, G. M., J. Ayars, S. A. Parks, H. E. Chmura, S. A. Cushman, and J. S. Sanderlin. "Pyrodiversity in a warming world: Research challenges and opportunities." Current Landscape Ecology Reports (2022): 1-19.

Oak forests and woodlands as Indigenous landscapes in the Eastern United States

"Oak forests and woodlands as Indigenous landscapes in the Eastern United States"

This open access article was published Dec. 14, 2021, in The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society.

Access the article through the permanent web address (DOI) (https://doi.org/10.3159/TORREY-D-21-00024.1)

Abstract

Land use by Indigenous people (Native Americans) and climate are primary factors affecting the dynamics of oak (Quercus) forests and woodlands in the eastern United States. Prior to Euro-American settlement, much of the eastern deciduous forest was dominated by oak species.

The role of periodic surface burning, agriculture, and other forms of land management by Indigenous peoples is frequently noted by cultural anthropologists and historical ecologists. However, these points are often debated by paleoecologists and climate scientists.

Here we present a literature review, synthesis, and data summary to investigate the role of altered land use, season of burning, and climate change in relation to pre– and post–Euro-American changes in forest composition. Human-based ignitions, as reflected by dormant-season fires, prevailed over the oak- and pine-dominated forests, with intermediate fire frequency during Indigenous periods. From the 18th century on, Euro-American populations rapidly expanded, impacting much of the eastern United States through extensive timber harvesting, land clearing, and severe fires. Starting in the 20th century, a variety of ecological influences, including agricultural land abandonment, chestnut blight, fire suppression, mesophication, and urbanization, resulted in dramatic vegetation changes in eastern landscapes. These trends have culminated in recruitment failures of most oak species on all but the most xeric sites and an increase in mid- to late-successional mesic hardwoods, most notably red maple (Acer rubrum), a species with very low density in our analysis of the witness tree record.

We conclude that prescribed burning, agriculture, and other land uses by Indigenous peoples created a mosaicked landscape of expansive oak savannas, woodlands, and forests. A warming world over the past century should have promoted warm-adapted, fire-tolerant, xerophytic genera such as oak, hickory (Carya), and pine (Pinus) and grassland communities but instead have promoted the invasion by cool-adapted, fire-sensitive, mesophytic trees due to the absence of burning, much to the detriment of major vegetation biomes.

Understanding that eastern oak and other pyrogenic ecosystems represent an Indigenous landscape strengthens our ability to best manage vegetation against the expansion of less desirable species and restore historic fire cycles through prescribed burning.

Citation

Abrams, Marc D., Gregory J. Nowacki, and Brice B. Hanberry. "Oak forests and woodlands as Indigenous landscapes in the Eastern United States." The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 149, no. 2 (2021): 101-121.

Reconstruction of the Spring Hill Wildfire and Exploration of Alternate Management Scenarios Using QUIC-Fire

This open-access article was published Oct 15, 2021 in the journal Fire

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Abstract

New physics-based fire behavior models are poised to revolutionize wildland fire planning and training; however, model testing against field conditions remains limited. We tested the ability of QUIC-Fire, a fast-running and computationally inexpensive physics-based fire behavior model to numerically reconstruct a large wildfire that burned in a fire-excluded area within the New York–Philadelphia metropolitan area in 2019. We then used QUIC-Fire as a tool to explore how alternate hypothetical management scenarios, such as prescribed burning, could have affected fire behavior. The results of our reconstruction provide a strong demonstration of how QUIC-Fire can be used to simulate actual wildfire scenarios with the integration of local weather and fuel information, as well as to efficiently explore how fire management can influence fire behavior in specific burn units. Our results illustrate how both reductions of fuel load and specific modification of fuel structure associated with frequent prescribed fire are critical to reducing fire intensity and size. We discuss how simulations such as this can be important in planning and training tools for wildland firefighters, and for avenues of future research and fuel monitoring that can accelerate the incorporation of models like QUIC-Fire into fire management strategies. View Full-Text

Keywords: prescribed fire; wildfire; QUIC-Fire; coupled fire-atmospheric models; fuels

Citation

Gallagher, Michael R., Zachary Cope, Daniel Rosales Giron, Nicholas S. Skowronski, Trevor Raynor, Thomas Gerber, Rodman R. Linn, and John Kevin Hiers. "Reconstruction of the Spring Hill Wildfire and Exploration of Alternate Management Scenarios Using QUIC-Fire." Fire 4, no. 4 (2021): 72.

Twenty-five years of tree demography in a frequently burned oak woodland: implications for savanna restoration

"Twenty-five years of tree demography in a frequently burned oak woodland: implications for savanna restoration"

This article was published Dec. 9, 2021 in the journal Ecosphere. This is an open-access journal.

Read or download the article from the journal using this permanent URL (DOI) (https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3844)

Abstract

Due to decades of fire suppression, much of the Upper Midwest savanna habitat has converted to oak woodland. In efforts to restore oak savanna habitat, fire has been re-introduced in many of these woodlands. A primary purpose of these burns is to kill the fire-sensitive mesophytic tree species, which had established themselves during the decades of fire suppression, reduce the number of understory trees, and preserve the larger more widely spaced oaks. It is clear from ongoing efforts that restoring oak savannas will require frequent fires over decades, but frequent fires over the long term can also threaten the desirable oaks. Long-term demographic studies at savanna restoration sites experiencing frequent fires are necessary to determine the extent to the frequent burns are supporting and/or confounding restoration goals. Results presented here are from a twenty-five-year demographic study of an Upper Midwest bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa) savanna/woodland experiencing frequent fire, during which both the survival and growth of more than 9000 trees were documented. Survival was assessed annually and growth every five years.

In the face of frequent fires, stem survival was found to be strongly associated with tree species, stem size, and stem growth. In turn, stem growth was found to be related to tree species and stem size. Decades of frequent burning in this oak woodland have substantially reduced the abundance of unwanted trees, specifically mesophytic species and Quercus ellipsoidalis, the latter which outcompetes Q. macrocarpa in the absence of fire. While Q. macrocarpa mid-sized (10–25 cm dbh) and large (≥25 cm dbh) trees are quite resistant to fire and now dominate the savanna landscape, they are not immune from fire-induced mortality.

It is recommended that the number and density of these trees should be re-evaluated every few years to ensure that desirable numbers remain. If necessary, fires should be suspended for a period of time. This will give smaller Q. macrocarpa trees time to grow larger and become more fire-resistant, thereby ensuring successive generations of Q. macrocarpa.

Citation

Davis, Mark A. "Twenty‐five years of tree demography in a frequently burned oak woodland: implications for savanna restoration." Ecosphere 12, no. 12 (2021): e03844.

Recoupling cross-scale interactions in tall fescue-invaded tallgrass prairie

"Recoupling cross-scale interactions in tall fescue-invaded tallgrass prairie"

This article was published online Oct. 11, 2021 in Landscape Ecology.

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Abstract

Context

Vegetation quantity and quality influence the degree to which large grazers shape grassland structural heterogeneity. Invasive plants threaten the function of cross-scale interactions that exist when multi-scale effects such as fire and grazing interplay to form patterns of grassland structural heterogeneity.

Objectives

We investigated how grazing pressure and time since fire at the patch scale influenced patch utilization and production as well as forage quality in experimental grassland pastures dominated by an invasive grass, tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceous). We also assessed the response of tall fescue utilization and production to interactive fire-and-grazing under moderate and heavy grazing pressure.

Methods

We collected data on vegetation quantity and quality over two grazing seasons to evaluate the role of fire and grazing across time in shaping structural heterogeneity among patches in invaded tallgrass prairie in Iowa, USA. We anticipated greater initial patch-scale utilization in patches burned for the first time in two years than patches not burned in two years in our experimental pastures. We expected that greater utilization in recently-burned patches would reduce tall fescue production, mostly where grazing pressure was highest.

Results

The contrast in the availability of live herbage between patches was half the level typical for native-dominated tallgrass prairie. Under increased grazing pressure, the interplay between fire and grazing did not result in greater broad-scale heterogeneity (among-patch heterogeneity) or an invasive grass reduction in experimental pastures. Yet, increased grazing early in the season did promote native-grass production in this invaded grassland landscape.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that the dominance of tall fescue mediates the lack of structural heterogeneity induced by patch-level prescribed fire and grazing. Unlike native perennial grasses, tall fescue provides access to forage in unburned patches through its low-stature growth form. Diminished cross-scale interactions through a weak coupling of fire and focal grazing in invaded tallgrass prairie may facilitate structural homogenization of fire-dependent grassland.

Keywords:     Cross-scale interactions; Forage quality; Herbivore-plant interactions; Prescribed fire; Pyric herbivory; Schedonorus arundinaceus

Citation

Raynor, Edward J., Heidi L. Hillhouse, Diane M. Debinski, James R. Miller, and Walter H. Schacht. "Recoupling cross-scale interactions in tall fescue-invaded tallgrass prairie." Landscape Ecology (2021): 1-17.

Variation in prescribed fire and bison grazing supports multiple bee nesting groups in tallgrass prairie

This article was published July 30, 2021 in Restoration Ecology.

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Abstract

Fire and grazing are historic ecosystem drivers of tallgrass prairie and both are used for restoration management today. The effects of these drivers on animal taxa are still incompletely resolved, especially for wild bees, a growing conservation and restoration priority. Fire and grazing could affect wild bee communities through structural changes to nest site availability via changes to soil conditions, vegetative cover, and availability of plant stems. Here, we sought to determine how different bee nesting groups are affected by the combination of fire and bison grazing management strategies. We grouped bee species by nesting substrate (ground, stem/hole, large cavity) because we expect the availability of these substrates to vary with the application of prescribed fire and grazing. We collected bees in restored and remnant high-quality tallgrass prairie and analyzed whether the proportion of each nesting group within the total bee community was predicted by fire and/or grazing. Ground-nesting bees reached their greatest proportion in bee communities immediately after prescribed fire, but declined proportionally over time since the last burn. Stem-/hole-nesting bees reached their highest proportion in the bee community with infrequent fire (6-year interval) and differed in their response to fire depending on the presence/absence of bison. Sampling year affected bee nesting groups and we found that nesting groups did not change in concert (i.e. different nesting groups had different good and bad years from each other). Our results show that spatiotemporal variation of prescribed fire and bison grazing is essential for conservation of multiple bee nesting groups.

Citation

Bruninga‐Socolar, Bethanne, Sean R. Griffin, Zachary M. Portman, and Jason Gibbs. "Variation in prescribed fire and bison grazing supports multiple bee nesting groups in tallgrass prairie." Restoration Ecology (2021): e13507.