Dataset Information

Landowner perceptions of woody plants and prescribed fire in the Southern Plains, USA.

ABSTRACT: Grassland environments face a number of threats including land use change, changing climate and encroachment of woody plants. In the Southern Plains of the United States, woody plant encroachment threatens traditional agricultural grazing economies in addition to grassland dependent wildlife species. Numerous studies have examined the physical drivers of conversion from grassland to woodland but social drivers may be equally important to understanding the causes of and prescriptions for environmental degradation. In this paper, we report the results of a survey of landowners in the Southern Plains of Texas and Oklahoma in which we asked participants to estimate the current amount of woody plant cover on their land, their preferred amount of woody plant cover and about their perspectives regarding the use of prescribed fire for managing woody plants. Prescribed fire is ecologically and economically one of the most effective tools for maintaining grasslands but many landowners do not use this tool due to lack of knowledge, lack of resources and concerns over safety and legal liability. We found that while most of our respondents did express a desire for less woody plant cover on their land, woody plant preference did not affect landowner's use of prescribed fire. However, belonging to a prescribed burn association and owning larger properties were correlated with increased use of prescribed fire. Woody plant cover preference was significantly influenced by landownership motivations, with hunters and other recreational motivated landowners preferring more trees and ranchers preferring fewer. This is important because throughout most of our study area, there has been a steady shift from agricultural production to amenity or recreational landownership, a trend that may undermine efforts to restore or maintain open grasslands. Future outreach efforts to promote prescribed fire to maintain grasslands should more actively support prescribed burn associations, which is an effective vehicle for increasing prescribed fire use by private landowners.

SUBMITTER: Stroman DA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7478812 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Landowner perceptions of woody plants and prescribed fire in the Southern Plains, USA.

Stroman Dianne A DA Kreuter Urs P UP Wonkka Carissa L CL

PloS one 20200908 9

Grassland environments face a number of threats including land use change, changing climate and encroachment of woody plants. In the Southern Plains of the United States, woody plant encroachment threatens traditional agricultural grazing economies in addition to grassland dependent wildlife species. Numerous studies have examined the physical drivers of conversion from grassland to woodland but social drivers may be equally important to understanding the causes of and prescriptions for environm ...[more]

PMID: 32898171

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Project description:Non-native plant invasions and changing management activities have dramatically altered the structure and composition of forests worldwide. Invasive shrubs and fire suppression have led to increased densification and biomass accumulation in forest ecosystems of the southeastern USA. Notably, Chinese and European privets are rapid growing, shade-tolerant shrubs which number among the most aggressive invasive species in these forests. Privet encroachment has caused losses of native diversity, alteration of ecosystem processes and changes in community structure. The latter has become manifest through decreases in fine herbaceous fuels concurrent with increases in coarse woody fuels in forest understoreys. These alterations in fuel structure will potentially lead to less frequent, but more severe forest fires, which threaten important forest resources during extreme weather conditions. Drawing on extensive data sets compiled by the US Forest Service, we integrated statistical forecasting and analytical techniques within a spatially explicit, agent-based, simulation framework to predict potential range expansion of Chinese and European privet (Ligustrum sinenseandL. vulgare) and the associated increase in crown fire risk over the next two decades in forestlands of Mississippi and Alabama. Our results indicate that probability of invasion is positively associated with elevation, adjacency (within 300 m) to water bodies, mean daily maximum temperature, site productivity and private land ownership, and is negatively associated with slope, stand age, artificial regeneration, distance to the nearest road and fire disturbance. Our projections suggest the total area invaded will increase from 1.36 to ?31.39% of all forestlands in Mississippi and Alabama (?7 million hectares) and the annual frequency of crown fires in these forestlands will approximately double within the next two decades. Such time series projections of annual range expansions and crown fire frequency should provide land managers and restoration practitioners with an invasion chronology upon which to base proactive management plans.

Dataset Information

Landowner perceptions of woody plants and prescribed fire in the Southern Plains, USA.

Publications

Landowner perceptions of woody plants and prescribed fire in the Southern Plains, USA.

Similar Datasets

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