West Texas Rangelands
West Texas RangelandsWe hope to provide a variety of science-based rangeland information and current research on prescribed fire, wildfires, brush management, and grazing management!

Fire and Follow-through!

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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. 

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A New Landowner’s Guide for Texas Rangelands

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New landowner ResourcesIf you’re a new landowner in Texas, you’re in a great position to take advantage of the many resources available to you!!! Texas has a rich and diverse group of natural resource organizations, agencies, and experts ready to assist you, often at little to no cost. There is a new publication written by Chase Brooke, Dr. Morgan Treadwell, Dr. David Matarrita-Cascante, and MK Futrell from the Department of Rangeland, Wildlife and Fisheries Management that highlights a variety of services, including cost-share opportunities, expert knowledge, planning assistance, and other support aimed at improving rangeland management practices and conservation. 

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Exotic Herbivores and Fire Energy Drive Standing Herbaceous Biomass but do not Alter Compositional Patterns in a Semiarid Savanna Ecosystem

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Did you know that fire regime alterations are pushing open ecosystems worldwide past tipping points where alternative steady states characterized by woody dominance prevail. The intensity and frequency of surface fires are reduced, limiting their effectiveness for controlling cover of woody plants. Grazing pressure can also reinforce woody encroachment by potentially reducing fine-fuel loads. 

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Integrated Pest Management for Woody Encroachment

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The top 5 woody invasive plant species in the Great Plains Grasslands include; Eastern redcedar, Honey mesquite, Chinese tallow, Ashe juniper, and Redberry juniper. Past brush management efforts have been unable to stop or reverse the loss of grasslands at county, state, or regional scales. Traditional management efforts have assumed that there are tolerable levels of the top five woody pests in grasslands before encroachment becomes a resource concern and mechanical or chemical removal of woody plants will restore a site back to a grassland. Scientists are now recommending more integrated approaches for dealing with woody species and ending the reinvasion cycle in grasslands. 

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Remove, Reduce, or Manipulate? Best Practices for Brush Management Conservation Standards in Great Plains Grasslands

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One of the biggest confusion points in brush management is the decision between removing, reducing, or manipulating woody plants. Past management decisions have addressed the symptoms of woody encroachment but not the root cause of the problem. To contribute to the efforts to confront the loss of grasslands at county and state, clarity is needed on which woody species need complete removal versus species who can be reduced or manipulated  without the threat of grassland loss.

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Prescribed Fire Checklist and Wildfire Ready Checklist

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Current drought conditions coupled with hot and windy days is a recipe for all things fire. Be ready on your place for a wildfire or put that wildfire to use with a burn plan and burnout operations!

Here are two checklists that will help you prepare you for wildfires and/or assist you in executing a prescribed fire or burnout operations on your property!

To find the full factsheet, click the image above or follow the link below.

https://agrilifelearn.tamu.edu/s/product/prescribed-fire-checklist/01t4x000004P8BE

 

 

To find the full factsheet, click the image above or follow the link below.

https://agrilifelearn.tamu.edu/s/product/wildfire-ready-checklist/01t4x000004OUeKAAW

 

ERM-1466 “Chemical Weed and Brush Control Reference Guide for Rangeland”

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The ERM-1466 “Chemical Weed and Brush Control Reference Guide for Rangeland” is a great source for land managers and stewards alike with general suggestions for herbicides used to control various brush and weed species found on Texas rangelands. In addition to this, this publication provides information on the levels of control expected for each specie. Follow the link below to download the publication!

ERM-1466

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New Publication Available Now!

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The Prescribed Fire Communications Kit provides resources to aid in discussion and facilitate interactions between those who conduct prescribed fires and the local community. This toolkit was designed for the landowner, county agent, or local government in mind. The goals of this free resource is to provide stewards of the land with the information to educate others and advocate for the safety and benefits of prescribed burning.

This publication can be downloaded from the link below or on the AgriLife Learn website, just search for Prescribed Burning Communication Kit.

prescribed-burning-communication-kits

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Thinking like a grassland…means thinking BIG!

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Thinking like a grassland.

What does this mean to you?

Well, to Dr. David Augustine from the USDA-ARS Station in Fort Collins, CO and others, it means large-scale movement of many species.  This large-scale movement enables the Great Plains evolved strategies to contend with drought, floods, and even wildfires…in a nutshell….extreme variability in weather resulting in low forage production.

Currently, our pattern of land ownership and use of Great Plains grasslands challenges native species conservation.   For example, too much management is focused at the scale of individual pastures or ranches, limiting opportunities to conserve landscape-scale processes such as fire, animal movement, and metapopulation dynamics.

“Figure 1. Potential natural vegetation of US portion of the North American Great Plains, adapted from Kuchler (1964).”

 

“Estimated extent of 5 major ecoregions of the US Great Plains, subdivided into 14 vegetation communities as mapped by Kuchler (1964; see Fig. 1). For each community, we present the estimated percent of the landscape in each of 10 land cover types based on an integration of cropland data layers (2011e2017) with the 2011 National Land Cover Database.”

 

Opportunities to increase the scale of grassland management include:

  1. Spatial prioritization of grassland restoration and reintroduction of grazing and fire.
  2. Finding creative approaches to increase the spatial scale at which fire and grazing can be applied to address watershed to landscape-scale objectives.
  3. Developing partnerships among government agencies, landowners, businesses, and conservation organizations that enhance cross-jurisdiction management and address biodiversity conservation in grassland landscapes, rather than pastures.

Thinking like a grassland should be pretty easy for us range managers…open spaces, big country, and…thinking big!!

For an in-depth view of “Thinking Like a Grassland: Challenges and Opportunities for
Biodiversity Conservation in the Great Plains of North America”, click on this link: Thinking like a grassland Augustine et al., 2020 REM.