Prescribed Burning Archives - Page 2 of 9

Framing the Flames: How We Talk About Wildfires Shapes Overall Perception of Fire

September 24, 2025 by jaime.sanford

Wildfire is one of the most complex and pressing challenges facing rangelands across the West. It spreads across vast acres, can be unpredictable, and impacts livestock, wildlife, watersheds, and communities. AND, in fire-dependent ecosystems, one thing is for certain, wildfires will happen. But here’s something we often overlook in the science: the way we talk about wildfire—specifically, the words and metaphors we use—shapes how we think about it, and more importantly, how fire is perceived.

Legal Barriers to Prescribed Burning

September 17, 2025 by jaime.sanford

For centuries, fire has been a natural and essential part of Texas ecosystems. Before modern fire suppression, grasslands and forests across the Southeast and into Texas grasslands burned routinely—some every 2 to 10 years. These natural fire regimes kept resprouting trees and understory brush in check, enhanced wildlife habitat, and sustained resilient, productive rangelands.

But decades of fire suppression have come at a cost. Without fire, woody plants like ashe juniper and eastern redcedar creep across pastures. Native grasses struggle to compete and are choked out. Wildlife habitat declines due to unbalanced monocultures and loss of species richness. And volatile fuel builds up, making wildfires hotter, longer,, and harder to control.

Fire and Follow-through!

July 9, 2025 by jaime.sanford

We are so grateful to showcase the amazing work of our department’s graduate students in RWFM 621! We worked with a devoted team of M.Sc. and Ph.D. students on developing a Communications Strategies and Extension Publication final project. This team took on an exciting task of making new science readily available to ranchers, landowners, and prescribed fire practitioners. Well done ya’ll and THANK YOU!!

For thousands of years, fire has played a vital role in shaping healthy grasslands across the Great Plains. From Indigenous communities using fire to manage hunting grounds to today’s producer striving for resiliency in rangeland pastures, prescribed fire continues to be a powerful process for rangeland stewardship. But as NEW research shows, it’s not just about the initial fire—it’s about timing, consistency, and PROCESS.

Prescribed Fire – An Ecological Necessity Ensuring Habitat & Ecosystem Integrity

June 25, 2025 by jaime.sanford

We’re excited to feature a guest blog this week, written by Samuel Campassi! Samuel brings a unique perspective and valuable insight to this topic—be sure to check out his full bio below.

Howdy! My name is Samuel Campassi. I am a senior Rangeland, Wildlife, and Fisheries Management (RWFM) major at Texas A&M University. As a generational hunter and outdoorsman, I am deeply passionate about all things conservation and priming the next generation of land stewards. This summer, I have the great honor of working under renowned range specialist and prescribe fire expert, Dr. Morgan Treadwell. I am so excited to be able to learn from Dr. Treadwell, and gain valuable range management skills that will benefit my career as a dedicated conservationist.

Escaped Prescribed Fire Patterns

May 28, 2025 by jaime.sanford

Prescribed fires are a necessary process for rangeland management, helping to reduce fuel loads, restore ecosystems, and mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires. More importantly, the estimated escape rate across the U.S. is quite low, at 0.16% (2022). A recent study by Li et al. (2025) sheds light on the spatial and temporal patterns of escape prescribed fires, offering crucial insights for rangeland managers and fire professionals.

Arthropod Response to Long-term Prescribed Fire

March 26, 2025 by jaime.sanford

Prescribed fire is a powerful tool for rangeland management, often used to control invasive species, promote native plant growth, and reduce wildfire risk. But what about the impact on the smaller inhabitants of our rangeland systems? A 2024 study sheds light on how prescribed fire, particularly long-term fire regimes and legacy fire effects, affect arthropod communities.

Getting to The Root of It

November 20, 2024 by jaime.sanford

Interactions between plants and soils, plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) are widely known to influence patterns of plant diversity at local and landscape scales. However, these interactions are rarely examined in the context of environmental factors. Prescribed fire is an environmental factor that alters microbial communities (Pourreza et al. 2014, Hedo et al. 2015, Prendergast-Miller et al. 2017). Prior to the study below, the influence of fire on PSFs was unexamined. Does fire affect PSF in woody legumes and what does it mean for Texas landowners? This study helped to answer this question by comparing soil microbial communities under living woody legumes, collected both within and outside of a burned area.

Portugal Wildfires and What Does That Have to do With Texas?

November 6, 2024 by jaime.sanford

The Euro-Mediterranean region is a high fire prone area with 48,000 fires reported annually. The fires are the result of landscape fuel build up which has been driven by absentee land ownership, wildfire suppression policies, extreme temperatures, and extended droughts that simultaneously occur. This study used the LANDIS-II forest landscape model which is considered a fire-smart management tool. Fire-smart management is based on controlling fire regimes through landscape interventions to reduce hazardous fuels and foster fire-resistant/resilient landscapes. The study included assessing how alternative fire management strategies affect future landscape dynamics, the fire regulation capacity, and fire regimes under long-term absentee land ownership and extreme climate scenarios.

Let’s Dance: Finding a Fire Rhythm for a Native Perennial Grass

October 23, 2024 by jaime.sanford

As rangeland ecologists and managers, we are quick to produce definitive results after short-term treatments or management strategies. For example, many of our research studies revolve on the same timeline as graduate students. That in rangeland time, is pretty dang short. That’s why this study is so important. It is the first of its kind and it emphasizes just how crucial long-term research is, because what we think is the answer may just be the tip of the iceberg. There are certain rhythms to pick up on, especially after fire. We just need to stick around long enough with it, to find that rhythm.

Woody Plant Encroachment – What other states are doing and saying

September 25, 2024 by jaime.sanford

Extreme climate swings, lengthened fire seasons, drought, floods, overgrazing, fragmentation, land-use change, urbanization, and altered disturbance regimes has created an increase in woody plants, commonly referred to as woody plant encroachment or (WPE). Woody encroachment has become a global phenomenon in nearly all grassland ecosystems. We have seen the devastating results of WPE in Texas grasslands and savannas and as we learn from our North Central partners (CO, KS, MT, ND, NE, SD, and WY) many of these states are on a similar trajectory of plant community transition. Through the work of the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center and the Rangeland Analysis Platform, other states can learn from our Texas lessons of WPE and aim for fire return intervals that minimize initial spread of woody species in grasslands.