Welp startin' early.
Already need to begin banking off what the weather's going to do and it's early March!! With the warm winter (might as well say spring has already begun) it'll be interesting to get our burn done. Usually we get a typical cold hard winter (frozen soil below 4 inches), and then in the spring it takes a little while longer for the soil to warm, the plants to come up, and a larger window to burn.
This year plants will want to begin "greening" up soon. The more green there is out in the field, the more you have to worry about smoke management. Live tissues create a heavy black smoke that is a little trickier to deal with. This is still a young prairie so there's not a lot of a live/dead ratio. A live/dead ratio relates to plants that are green, but still have enough dead plant material on the ground to carry the fire.
*Note
In order to injure cool season grasses/forbs, you would want to play off the idea of the live/dead ratio. Typically these cool season grasses are exotic (all exotics come up before natives, and stay up longer than natives during the growing season). This is a HUGE advantage for restorationists. Running a fire when the natives are down in the fall, and the grasses are still up, allows you to injure the grasses while the dead plant material from years past is able to carry the fire through. Likewise if you burned before the natives come up, and the exotics have already sprouted.
A couple chances seem to be next week with R.H.'s (relative humidity) hovering around 60%. Nothing better. Depending on how much rain we'll get tonight will depict a lot with burning next week. The cold front coming in from the northwest seems spotty now, but will probably all form together for a solid rain. At least that's what the forecast is calling.
Already need to begin banking off what the weather's going to do and it's early March!! With the warm winter (might as well say spring has already begun) it'll be interesting to get our burn done. Usually we get a typical cold hard winter (frozen soil below 4 inches), and then in the spring it takes a little while longer for the soil to warm, the plants to come up, and a larger window to burn.
This year plants will want to begin "greening" up soon. The more green there is out in the field, the more you have to worry about smoke management. Live tissues create a heavy black smoke that is a little trickier to deal with. This is still a young prairie so there's not a lot of a live/dead ratio. A live/dead ratio relates to plants that are green, but still have enough dead plant material on the ground to carry the fire.
*Note
In order to injure cool season grasses/forbs, you would want to play off the idea of the live/dead ratio. Typically these cool season grasses are exotic (all exotics come up before natives, and stay up longer than natives during the growing season). This is a HUGE advantage for restorationists. Running a fire when the natives are down in the fall, and the grasses are still up, allows you to injure the grasses while the dead plant material from years past is able to carry the fire through. Likewise if you burned before the natives come up, and the exotics have already sprouted.
A couple chances seem to be next week with R.H.'s (relative humidity) hovering around 60%. Nothing better. Depending on how much rain we'll get tonight will depict a lot with burning next week. The cold front coming in from the northwest seems spotty now, but will probably all form together for a solid rain. At least that's what the forecast is calling.
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