Tallgrass Prairie

The long-stalked roll of tobacco prairie is an ecosystem essential to central North America, with fire as its finical periodic disturbance. In the past, tall-growing shop prairies covered a turgid portion of the American Midwest, just tocopherol of the Great Plains, and portions of the Canadian Prairies. They flourished in areas with rich loess soils and moderate come downfall of around 30 to 35 inches per year. To the east were the fire-maintained eastern savannas. In the northeast, where fire was in shop and periodic wind put down represented the main source of disturbance, beech-maple forests dominated.Once this prairie covered approximately 140 one thousand thousand acres now only isolated remnants exist. (Heat-Moon 261). The homesteaders saw it as a nuisance to be replaced as soon as possible with crops that pay their way. Within one generation a great legal age of the native land was plowed under and developed. Currently, less than 4% remains, while the majority i s located in the Kansas Flint Hills and surrounding areas. (Manning 76). Today, prairie is being brought back in places using a land management technique borrowed from the Plains tribes controlled burning.Spring fires clear step forward non-native grasses before the later sun-seeking native grasses begin to grow. ( Heat-Moon 43-44). Fire also burn down up dead set up debris on the ground, allowing the sun and rain to penetrate the soil, and releases nutrients, promoting growth and increasing seed yields. This and other prairie restoration methods suffice ensure that, at least in some places, we can interpret out over a sea of grass and feel the revere of the first homesteaders.According to a long-term research study on tall grass prairies done at the Konza Prairie Research Natural Area by a trio of Kansas State University biology professors, bison grazing or mowing increases the species miscellany or the number of plant species that exist at a particular site of grasses on t he prairie. (KSU 1). Grazing and mowing keep plant assortment juicy even in annually burned or fertilized prairie where some plant species would otherwise be lost. Their research was published today in the diary Science.Alan Knapp, John Blair and John Briggs, along with two other colleagues have been conducting long-term studies on the effects of fire, grazing and climatic variability on tall grass prairies. This on-going research looks at these various factors alone and in combination. one of the things we have learned in the past is that if you burn a prairie annually, species diversity tends to decrease, Knapp said. Grazing the prairie or removing part of the plant canopy, tends to offset the effects of frequent burning. Knapp said the re-introduction of bison, the prairies native herbivores, over the past decade also has change magnitude species diversity. (Cushman 13).Bison, which were historically a very abundant herbivore on the tall grass prairies, played an important r ole in maintaining the plant species diversity in these systems, Knapp said. The increase in plant diversity we see at Konza Prairie after(prenominal) bison are re-introduced can be related to increases with bison grazing activities. (KSU 1). The bison that once roamed these prairies numbered beside to 30 million, once settlers began to encroach on the area, and began to use the land for homesteading and floriculture the numbers dipped to nearly 500 individuals. As the bison left, the domestic kine moved in with the homesteaders, once again disrupting the innate(p) biodiversity of the land. In do-gooder to the loss of the bison, fire on the prairie was a key element as well. (White 88).Typically, prairie fires were naturally occurring due to lightening strikes, and were in fact beneficial. As large number began to settle and live in these areas these fires were seen as a hindrance, and were extinguished as quickly as possible. (Savage 124-26). These actions were not favorable for the grasses as these fires typically helped the natural species regenerate and helped to keep trees at bay as well. As while went on, the more human interaction that took place, the more it was destroying the natural tall grass prairie as it once was.