Benefits of Patch Burning
Vegetation
Patch burning through preferential grazing of
burned patches promotes a diversity of plant species (Figure 7). An
abundance of forbs can be expected to increase following the fire
and heavy grazing pressure of focal grazing for several years
following burning, but forbs contribute an important element to
wildlife ...
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Soil
and Nutrient Cycling
Fire and grazing are interactive disturbance processes that
are important to the structure and function of grassland ecosystems
including the soils. There have been numerous studies of nitrogen
(N) availability in grasslands that have reported different effects
following grazing and fire. However, these studies have ...
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Wildlife
The creation of diverse habitats for single or
multiple species is the main benefit from patch burning (Figure 1,
Table 1). Creating varied habitats increases the diversity of
species on a given area (Figures 11, 12, 13). This increased
diversity of habitats and species can increase recreational lease
values. Again patch burning gives control ...
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Domestic Livestock
In studies comparing patch burning (PB) to
pasture managed with traditional management (TM) practices, weight
gains of stocker cattle did not differ. This is from four years of
data taken from tallgrass prairie at the OSU Research Range (OSURR)
located west of Stillwater, Oklahoma, and from nine years of grazing
data from eroded mixed-grass prairie ...
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Domestic Livestock Benefits
Prescribed
Fire Program
Patch burning benefits all aspects of a
prescribed burning program. The major benefit of patch burning is
additional accumulation of fine fuel, which is readily achieved
without any deferment of grazing before or after burning. With
larger amounts of fine fuel, burns can be conducted under safer
weather conditions, including lower air temperature and higher
relative humidity (Figure 17). With greater amounts and more
continuous fine fuel loads, fires can be more intense, which results
in ...
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Invasive
Plants
Invasive plants are defined by their ability to
rapidly increase in vegetative cover, the rate and extent of land
area they occupy, along with their ability to disrupt an existing
ecosystem. While most plant species stay within a set area and have
herbivores or other limitations to their expansion, invasive plants
...
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