Stories and Blog Posts about Prairie Ecology
Check out these posts on the Prairie Ecologist blog;
An Early Attempt to Evaluate Prairie Restoration Success by Looking at Insect Use.
Back in February, I wrote a post that laid out some ideas about how to measure success when using prairie restoration (reconstruction) to stitch fragmented remnant prairies back together. One of the main needs is to see whether species from the remnant are also using the restored prairie. If I’m trying to make a small remnant prairie function as a larger prairie by adding restored prairie around it, the species in the remnant must be able to expand into and travel through the… read more
How Should Landowners Evaluate Their Prairies?
I always enjoy talking with landowners about their prairies because it helps remind me what’s important to them. I already know what I want to see happen in the prairies I manage, but every landowner has their own individual … read more
The Problem with “Calendar Prairies”
I think I first heard the term “calendar prairie” from my friend Bill Whitney of Prairie Plains Resource Institute. He was talking about the mental image many people have of prairies that comes from seeing photographs of grasslands full of big…read more
Why Every Prairie Really is Unique – and Why it Matters
Several years ago, I helped assemble a group of partners to begin some pilot research on what kinds of impacts habitat fragmentation may be having on the tallgrass prairies in southeastern Nebraska. While those prairies are greatly fragmented compared…read more
The Myth of Self-Sustaining Prairies
Here’s a question I get asked occasionally: “At what point will my prairie become self-sustaining?” There are lots of ways “self-sustaining” can be defined, of course, but usually the person is hoping that at some point they can just step back … Continue reading →
