Effects of Summer Burning and Mowing on Central Texas Juniper-Oak Savanna Plant Communities During Drought Conditions

摘要

We have begun a long-term project to study the effects of mowing and burning on the juniper-oak savanna at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. As researchers in landscape restoration, we find that experimenting with historic disturbance regimes, such as fire, grazing and haying, provides us with insights into the best ways to recreate a more natural dynamic between the forbs, grasses, and woody plants that existed before intensive livestock grazing became a common land-use practice here in Texas. As part of the outreach goal of the Wildflower Center, we hope that the knowledge we gain can be passed on to land managers who are working to restore and manage these grassland plant communities. In this article, we look at the response of individual tagged plants over time to mowing and burning in the summer. The results we obtained indicate that there is a difference in grass recovery time between these two disturbance techniques and that this could have an effect on overall community composition.