Spring has arrived early this year, giving us great weather for a March burn. On Wednesday, March 24 we burned the newly acquired corner lot prairie remnant. This lot which is a little over an acre, was previously a wooded site until it was cleared in the spring of 2006. After the landowner cleared almost all of the vegetation to build a house, the project went idle and the field went fallow.
A look at historic aerial photos shows that the site was completely free of trees at least from 1940-1963. After that, the land was left to regenerate on its own and thus was full of fire sensitive vegetation (elms, red cedars, maples, dogwoods). Historic vegetation maps from MNFI indicate that black oak barrens (oak savannas) once covered the area and the remnant vegetation that we have observed over the past four years has supported that theory.
Surprisingly, this site has produced a variety of native wildflowers since it was cleared four years ago which means that it most likely wasn't tilled during the farming era (1850-1960). Sites like these that were not tilled due to soggy/poor soils or irregular topography were likely used for pastures and could potentially be high-quality prairie or savanna remnants.
Our site slopes to the south from White Lake Road at the north and Highland Hills Drive to the east. Interesting about the site is that it ranges from dry-mesic at the north to wet-mesic at the south where it borders a larger hardwood-swamp complex. On the day of our burn, the weather was relatively warm (about 50F), low relative humidity (about 30%) and no wind which made the burn nice and slow which is what we wanted due to the fact that this site probably hasn't been burned for at least 50 years (most likely much, much longer). The slow burn really cooks the invasive brush and helps to consume as much fuel as possible, waking as much of the native seedbed as possible. It will be an interesting first growing season to see how the native flora responds.
Our next duty will be to remove and treat all the invasive brush, and monitor for other aggressive exotic species throughout the growing season.
