Decades of fire suppression in the Great Plains have resulted in conversion of grass-dominated prairies into woodlands. This conversion has led to dramatic decreases in the availability of suitable prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus spp.) habitat. Recently, land managers and conservationists have attempted to combat this woody encroachment through the use of patch-burning, the patchy application of prescribed fire followed by grazing, which takes advantage of the fire-grazing interaction. The result is increased heterogeneity of vegetation community composition and structure. Our study compares the effects of patch-burning to fire alone on current and historic prairie-chicken habitat. Four vegetation types are represented by four sites across Texas and Oklahoma: tallgrass prairie, shinnery oak, sand-sagebrush, and gulf coastal prairie. All sites are within the historic or current distribution of either Lesser (T. pallidicinctus), Greater (T. cupido cupido), or Attwater's Prairie-Chickens (T. cupido attwateri). Three sites currently practice patch-burning, while the fourth uses prescribed fire alone. Un-grazed areas are available at each site for comparison to patch-burn treatments. At each site, we measured vegetation characteristics important to prairie-chicken habitat. Measurements were taken along transects in patches with different times since fire. Vegetation community composition differed between patches with different times since fire. These results suggest that patch-burning does indeed increase heterogeneity of vegetation structure, providing a suite of habitat types necessary for prairie-chickens throughout the year.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.