photo by: Contributed

A native prairie pasture in western Douglas County.

Before European settlement, Kansas was dominated by vast prairies of tall grasses and wildflowers. However, farming and development have since altered the landscape, prompting researchers at the University of Kansas to help uncover how much of it remains intact in Douglas County.

Prairie pastures, which include native prairie that has never been plowed being grazed by cattle, have played an important ecological role in the Douglas County landscape. Yet, the prairie pastures in Douglas County have not yet been formally documented and surveyed.

These pastures provide habitat for grassland birds and native pollinators and, with soils that have never been plowed, are a potential reservoir of native soil microbe communities.

“That’s really important for prairie because there’s a lot of stuff that is in the soil that helps maintain (it), like the soil microbes and the root structure system,” Moody said.

“Anytime that a prairie is plowed over, it can’t really be brought back to its original state, so knowing where there’s intact prairie soil is very important, especially if we want to think about using that as a resource to maybe help with restoration efforts and improve our prairies,” Moody said.

According to the survey’s website, the Kansas Natural Heritage Inventory, part of the Kansas Biological Survey and Center for Ecological Research, has conducted inventories of native prairie hay meadows – land set aside for the production of hay – in Douglas County, which represent the best intact tallgrass prairies remaining, but the research is missing a key land use that still have some native prairie intact.

In order to begin filling a data gap and to document the native prairie pastures, researchers Jennifer Moody and Jennifer Delisle of the Kansas Biological Survey and Center for Ecological Research traveled over 600 miles, conducting roadside surveys and conducting on-site visits to over 150 grasslands in western Douglas County, where the largest parcels of open grasslands are currently found.

Moody said the reason why this is the place to find prairie is because the area is less populated, and there’s a shift in “ecotone,” a transition zone, between the eastern deciduous forest and the tallgrass prairie biomes. She added that a lot of these areas remain intact because the land was passed down from generations and continues to be used for ranching.

The total project cost was $42,606, with $38,731 from the Natural and Cultural Heritage Grant program from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council, and the remainder covered by the University of Kansas and the Kansas Biological Survey and Center for Ecological Research.

The work was divided up into three steps, including the identification of potential sites using historic and modern aerial imagery, roadside assessments and site visits to inventory the different plant species growing in the pastures.

During the roadside assessments, the researchers focused on identifying native prairie pastures, which are primarily made up of warm-season grasses such as Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, and Indian Grass. These grasses are referred to as warm-season grasses because they sprout later in the spring and bloom in mid-to-late summer, during the warmest months.

In contrast, there are also non-native grasslands dominated by introduced cool-season grasses like Brome and Fescue. Cool-season grasses emerge early in spring and bloom in early summer, when temperatures remain cooler.

But sometimes, it can be difficult to determine if a grassland is a native pasture if you’re standing on the side of the road. The researchers contacted landowners to get permission for onsite visits to survey the pastures. These visits also allowed them to talk with landowners about their land and the challenges they face, Moody said.

A lot of those challenges stem from plants themselves, like the invasive plant Sericea Lespedeza, more commonly known as Chinese bushclover, and encroachment of woody plants.

Many of the landowners told the researchers that they had used herbicide to their pastures to manage the invasive species, but while spraying for Lespedeza is necessary, it can also lower the overall diversity of wildflowers in the pastures.

The cattle grazing these pastures also play a role in lowering the diversity of pastures. Like people, they have favorite foods, Moody said.

“Cattle also have preferences,” Moody said. “Some of these prairie species that you only find on prairies, the cattle really like, so things like prairie clover is one.”

Moody said that one thing that would be interesting to explore is finding out what’s within the soil of the native pastures that have never been plowed. She added that this research could be useful for other pastures that may want to try replicating the landscape to what it once was.