It's been a dry month; however, we did get 0.99 in spread out over three days last week. It doesn't make up for the hole we're in, but it is enough to start to see some response on the burn unit.
Late summer fires tend to promote forb growth, and suppress warm season grasses to a certain extent. This is because warm season grasses have just poured a tremendous amount of energy into reproduction (flower and seed growth) and removing the energy collection portions of the plant (the leaves) doesn't allow the plant to store much energy for winter, and thus, next spring's growth. We burned in late July, so while warm season grasses might take a slight hit, there should be a good balance between forbs and grass regeneration.
Still doesn't look like much response from the photo points, but that spot is at the highest elevation, and some of the poorest soil. If you look closely, you can see some forbs.
Scarlet globemallow ( Sphaeralcea coccinea) responding
Fire is part of what kept mesquite density low on the Llano Estacado. Regular fire supresses and can kill mesquite; however, mesquite older than about three years, resprout mesquite, and mesquite that has had its bud zone buried is largely immune to normal fire.
It is already resprouting.
We set back quite a bit mesquite on this fire, but it had been seven years since the last fire in this pasture. So, some of it escaped death.
There are also some new mesquite sprouts showing up after the rain. This is too be expected; fire is not a one time use thing (no management tool is for that matter).
There were quite a few other forbs beginning to emerge. I couldn't identify all of them, but buffalo gourd, scarlet globe mallow, ragweed, , silverleaf nightshade and several others were coming up. If we get our fall rain, it should really take off before winter.
Speaking of taking off, I'm about to hit the busy part of my year, so I probably will not update the post fire monitoring until winter, and then perhaps once spring green-up begins.
One month post-burn.
Swarm of bees in saltbush in prescribed burn unit.
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
Probably blue grama, but I don't know.
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
I'm not 100% convinced that this is ragweed.
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn.
Good example of mesquite resilience against fire. Had the fine fuel load been higher, it would have slowed down, but not prevent resprouting.
However, fire is an excellent management tool against mesquite less than two years old.
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
Probably curved-bill, but I haven't looked at it enough yet.
One month post-burn
One month post-burn
Comments
Add a Comment