The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States

Appendix 4. Bibliographic Notes

I benefited from a number of information sources while writing this book. These included peer-reviewed literature, other published literature, websites, and personal conversations. Because the field of prairie management is still relatively young, the best information available changes rapidly as new data come in and new techniques are tested. I tried to ensure that I was as up to date as possible by asking a large number of reviewers to assess portions of the book that matched their particular expertise. Prairie Ecology Introduction; Plant Communities; The Role of Disturbance Statistics on the loss of prairie of different types vary somewhat, but a standard source of information is the 1994 BioScience article by Fred Samson and Fritz Knopf. A more detailed breakdown of the same information can be found in a 1998 article they wrote with Wayne Ostlie and published in a Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center publication. The history of fire in prairies is often debated and can be a tricky subject because no one was recording data on fire frequency several thousand years ago. However, Tom Bragg has nicely encapsulated fire and soils information in his chapter on the physical environment of grasslands in The Changing Prairie. Additional information on fire, soils, and the basic ecology of prairies can be found, among Appendix 4. Bibliographic Notes appendices 197 bibliographic notes other places, in Cornelia Mutel’s book The Emerald Horizon; Steve Pyne’s Fire in America; and Grassland Dynamics: Long Term Ecological Research in Tallgrass Prairie by Alan Knapp and others, which summarizes research from Konza Prairie Research Natural Area in Kansas. Information on glaciation and geologic timeframes for prairie came from The True Prairie Ecosystem by Paul Risser and colleagues, as well as from a 1992 paper published by Richard Baker and others. Grazing comparisons between bison and cattle are summarized nicely in David Hartnett, Al Steuter, and Karen Hickman’s chapter on native and introduced ungulates in Ecology and Conservation of Great Plains Vertebrates . Climate information as it relates to prairie type was pulled largely from a 2003 article by Stanley Changnon, Kenneth Kunkel, and Derek Winstanley in Transactions of the Illinois State Academy of Science. Much of the information in these chapters also comes from my personal experiences and conversations with colleagues, particularly Gerry Steinauer, the state botanist for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Animal Communities Most of the insect statistics in this chapter were pulled from summarized information in a paper by Richard Redak. Several websites have excellent resources on invertebrates of all kinds and were useful as well, including Bugwise.net (Australian Museum) and the National Biological Information Infrastructure website. Information on the biomass of grasshoppers at Konza Prairie came from a 2006 BioScience paper on grasshopper control theories by David Branson, Tony Joern, and Gregory Sword. Gary Belovsky and Jennifer Slade’s excellent paper on insect herbivory and plant production provided me with good background for that section. James Trager’s online article on prairie ants was wonderful, and personal conversations with him were equally useful. Brenda Molano-Flores from the Illinois Natural History Survey has also been a great source of information for me. In addition, I’ve become active in insect research in the past several years, much of that in collaboration with Craig Allen (University of Nebraska–Lincoln) and others. Jim Herkert, now with The Nature Conservancy in Illinois, is among the top researchers in the field of grassland birds and habitat fragmentation. Jim has numerous papers on the subject and was helpful to me when I was 198 appendix 4 doing my graduate research on the same topic. I now enjoy the ability to call him up on business and see him at meetings periodically. A number of other researchers and papers have addressed this topic as well. Upland game bird information was fact-checked by Scott Taylor with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission and Steve Clubine with the Missouri Department of Conservation . Information on reptiles and amphibians was gleaned from several of sources , as well as personal knowledge, but the most useful site for both general information and management implications was that of Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation. Small mammal information was gleaned from multiple sources, including Konza Prairie’s webzine, website, and research, summarized in Grassland Dynamics. In addition, the Illinois State Museum’s website had great general information on small mammals and many other topics associated with Midewin National Tallgrass...