Question

Environmental Science

Prairie ecosystems

I want you to think about fire and succession in a prairie environment. What do you think happens in our prairie in terms of ecological succession "Primary and secondary succession" when we burn it in the spring? Does succession continue or does something else happen.

Answer 1

Fire does not disturb the successions of prairie, the tall grasses of the prairie have evolved for over tens of 1000s of years tolerating disturbances like fire. The fire was annually used by native people in those places, fire kills vascular tissues of plants but prairie plants are well adapted and 75% of the total biomass of these plants are under the soil and can regrow from deep roots. The effect of fire on prairies is that it removes trees, clears matters of dead plants, and availability of nutrients in the soil gets changed due to ash produced from fire.

In terms of ecological succession, when we burn it in the spring, these trees don't have a secure kind of backup, so, in secondary succession firstly the annual plants grow that live for an year or so then the grasses which grow quickly and spread quickly grows, in this regrowing process the first plants that colonise come under primary succession and are classified as pioneer species.