Knowledge on the potential fire behavior of an ecosystem provides the foundation for understanding how many plants respond to fire and for developing fire suppression strategies; however, fire behavior is often overlooked as part of experimental research, especially in rangelands. In this paper, we present (1) the results of a formal literature review that determines the extent to which experimental field studies have quantified fire behavior in tallgrass prairie; and (2) the results of a model that characterizes how contemporary changes in social-ecological feedbacks have altered the potential fire behavior of this ecosystem. We conducted the literature review using a common scientific publication search engine, Web of Knowledge. Based on our search parameters, only 9 independent field experiments have quantified fire intensity, rate of fire spread, or maximum fire temperature in tallgrass prairie, which is surprising given that tallgrass prairie is one of the most extensively studied ecosystems in the world. Data from these studies demonstrate the massive constraints modern fire management policies place upon natural resource managers in tallgrass prairie. This effect was reflective of our modeling output. Fire management policies decrease fire intensity and rate of fire spread considerably more than wholesale invasion of the cool-season grass tall fescue (Schendonorus phoenix) in native tallgrass prairie and was equivalent to 25 years of Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) encroachment. We discuss the implications of constraining potential fire behavior and the extraordinary obstacles limiting the ability for rangeland managers to overcome contemporary fire management policies to burn in a broader range of fire conditions.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.