The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States

Appendix 2. Additional Information on Prescribed Fire

Prescribed fire is a difficult topic to address because in most places there are few easy options for getting your prairie burned. There are enough safety concerns with fire that if you don’t have considerable experience it’s not a good idea to try to burn your own site. Check with local conservation organizations to see if there are training courses offered in your area and volunteer yourself to help with other burns to gain experience. Other options can include experienced neighbors, contractors, local rural fire departments, or local conservation organizations. In all cases, the first step is to learn what your local laws concerning prescribed fire are. Talk to your local fire department, and find out what the protocol is for obtaining permission to burn. If you don’t feel comfortable with burning your prairie yourself, check with your fire chief and/ or other landowners in the area for other options. In some places, there are local contractors who can burn your prairie for you. Even local volunteer fire departments can sometimes help out, for a fee or just for experience. There are three main steps to conducting a safe and effective burn on your prairie: planning, site preparation, and implementation. Planning The first step in planning a burn is to have a clear objective. Are you trying simply to remove the litter and standing dead grass? Are you trying to kill Appendix 2. Additional Information on Prescribed Fire appendices 185 additional information on prescribed fire trees? If so, do you have large trees you want to save or do you want everything dead? Are you trying to suppress cool-season grasses or facilitate their growth? All of these questions should be answered before you start thinking about how and when the burn will be conducted. Once you have an objective, there are at least five critical components to a fire plan. These are presented to give you an idea of the kind of planning that has to occur. Much more thought and information will be required to put together an actual plan. 1. Firebreaks. Decide where you will stop the fire on all sides of the unit and what preparation you will need to make that happen. Roads, disked cropfields, and other bare areas can be helpful, but often you will want to use mowed lines or other kinds of breaks as well. If you mow a firebreak, make sure that you also rake the dead grass out before lighting the fire. If you’re going to burn in the spring, mowing in the late fall can allow any cut grass that isn’t raked out to settle down to the ground during the winter, where it will be much less likely to catch fire during your burn. 2. Fuel. Consider the kinds of fuels available within the unit to be burned and in the adjacent areas. Is the grass tall and continuous or short and patchy? Are there living trees or piles of dead trees that will shoot embers into the air when they’re burned? What are the fuels outside the unit? Would you be able to easily catch a fire that hops over your line? 3. Potential hazards. Are there buildings, fields, hay bales, or anything else inside the unit or downwind that could be vulnerable to fire? What kinds of concerns might there be with smoke from your fire? Are there homes or roads that would be affected by large amounts of smoke? Is your entire unit accessible by the equipment you plan to use for your fire? What about accessibility to adjacent sites? 4. Desired weather conditions. A good weather forecast is essential. There are great websites (the National Weather Service and Weather Underground provide two of them) that give detailed forecasts of mul- 186 appendix 2 tiple conditions. In addition, you may be able to call your local National Weather Service office and talk to the public forecaster on the day of the fire to double-check conditions. Try to get forecasts that break down the day into hourly segments if possible, so you can get a feel for how the day will likely progress. The air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed will be the three biggest factors controlling your fire, but others are important too, like the atmospheric mixing height that helps determine how your smoke lifts. Generally speaking you’ll want your air temperature to be...