It’s not too early to think about next spring’s controlled burns. One point that arises is burn frequency. Restoration should be guided by the goals of the project. Thus, if…

A neighbor scouting for deer in the North-facing oak woods that we had recently burned spotted nine female deer with their heads down, feeding. Eating on what? Acorns, of course.…

Can a "native" species be called an invader? Whether an invader is native or not is irrelevant. If it spreads into an area, forms monocultures, and results in a marked…

Woody encroachment is a major problem throughout prairie and savanna sites in Central North America, and the principal reason for this is insufficient fire. The purpose of this paper is…

Choosing the right day for a fall burn is always tricky. If you burn too early, most of the leaves (the principal fuel) aren’t down yet. And if you burn…

This is a follow-up/extension of my Oct. 24, 2014 post on “Legacyeffects in prairie restoration”. which was based on the paper I gave/published in the 2012 NorthAmerican Prairie Conference. To…

In the past dozen or so years ecologists have begun to realize that the future of a prairie remnant is strongly influenced by its past history, and these “legacy effects”…

Earlier in the fall I thought the fall color was going to be a bust, but there has been a marvelous transformation over the last week. The color this year…

This is the time of year when acorns are dropping and you can hear them crunch under your feet as you walk through the woods. However, only a few oak…

This is a nice time for an overview of the understory vegetation in our bur oak savannas. The canopy cover varies quite a bit from one area to another, and…