Prescribed Burn Monitoring – Fire Intensity and Vegetation Community Changes

Posted on December 3, 2024 by jmasonfpdwc

Part 2 – Why Bother Doing Prescribed Burn Monitoring

By: Julianne Mason, Ecological Management Supervisor, Forest Preserve District of Will County, Illinois

The ecological effects of prescribed burns can vary a lot depending on seasonality, frequency, and fire intensity.  In recent years, we have been using a standardized protocol to monitor the intensity of prescribed burns.  See Part 1 of this blog post for details.  Basically, it combines taking post-burn photos from permanent photo point locations with recording the percent burn coverage, average char height, and fire intensity category in the vegetation and substrate layers.  By doing standardized monitoring to characterize burn intensity, it gives us a more nuanced way to assess how prescribed burns are affecting plant communities.

Prescribed burns can vary a lot in intensity depending on weather conditions (relative humidity, temperature, wind speed), fuel moisture levels, fuel model type (grassland vs woodland), and firing techniques (backing, flanking, or headfires).

I wish we had started using a standardized protocol to assess fire severity decades ago.  Here’s why: one of the most interesting and fun projects of my career was to do a 20-year repeat of a 1996 photo point monitoring study.  It was a landscape-scale scavenger hunt combined with an ecologically interesting snapshot of two decades of change.  When I analyzed the changes between 1996 and 2003, a dominant trend was that most of our woodlands had an increased density of understory trees.  In general, the woodland floors had gotten darker and herbaceous vegetation had become sparser during that period.  One exception to this trend was at Raccoon Grove Nature Preserve in Monee, IL.  Unlike all the other woodlands, Raccoon Grove had less understory trees in 2003 than in 1996 and was visibly sunnier and brighter.

Raccoon Grove photo point in 1996 (left) and 2003 (right). The ground layer was visibly sunnier and brighter in 2003 and there were fewer understory trees.
Another Raccoon Grove photo point in 1996 (left) and 2003 (right). Especially to the left and behind the marker, note the reduction in understory tree density.

This sunnier understory at Raccoon Grove was mystifying to me because the only ecological management that we had done during that period was routine prescribed burning.  When I pulled the burn records for the period between 1996 and 2003, two of the burns at Raccoon Grove were done in the spring (3/28/01 and 4/3/03) under relatively “cool” conditions (rH 50%+, temps 35-50°F).  One fall burn (11/24/98) was done under “moderate” conditions (rH 24‐50%, 50°F) in dry leaf litter.  All three burns were reported to have 75-90% burn coverage, and they all seemed to be very normal prescribed burns.  Based on the general descriptions given in the reports, none of the burns was the type of truly hot fire that I would expect to kill trees and thin the understory density. 

Typical prescribed burn at Raccoon Grove, with an assessed fire intensity of patchily lightly burned (category 3.5).

An earlier burn’s report had some crumbs that indicate a potentially hotter fire: this burn was done in the spring (4/2/1996), and conditions were described as “hot” in the prairie and along the forest edge but “cool” in the interior forest.  Although weather conditions were not unusual for prescribed burns (rH 35-40%, temps 50-70°F), the burn report references smoldering logs and indicates that fire reignited overnight and had to be put out on a neighbor’s property the next day. 

I wish we had used a better protocol to characterize the severity of prescribed burns back then.  I would love to know if a more complete and intense burn in the substrate layer from just one burn potentially was responsible for the understory tree thinning that resulted.  Or, perhaps, the burn frequency of four “solid” burns in seven years was a bigger factor.  With better monitoring, we would be able to tease out the different aspects contributing to a fire’s effects.  We would know better how to prescribe burn conditions to meet specific management outcomes.

Post-burn monitoring to document and characterize a fire’s intensity.

Prescribed burning is one of the ecological management activities that has higher risks to human and wildlife safety.  That makes it important to make sure that the prescribed burns are meeting management objectives.  It doesn’t take much extra time to do prescribed burn monitoring, and to accumulate data to learn better how fire intensity can influence vegetation communities.  No need to wait – start using a standardized protocol to monitor your fire’s effects during this burn season. Our future selves and future ecologists will thank us!

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Prescribed Burn Monitoring – Fire Intensity

Posted on November 25, 2024 by jmasonfpdwc

Part 1 – Fire Intensity Monitoring Protocol

Julianne Mason, Ecological Management Supervisor, Forest Preserve District of Will County, Illinois

I know, I know.  There’s a lot to do during prescribed burn season and monitoring typically isn’t high on the list of pressing priorities.  However, I would like to make the case that prescribed burn monitoring doesn’t have to take up much additional time, and the data is well worth the small amount of additional effort!

The ecological effects of prescribed burns can vary a lot depending on seasonality, frequency, and fire intensity.  Seasonality and frequency are pretty straightforward to track over time by just recording the dates and areas burned.  Fire intensity is more complicated to infer since it is affected by many factors like weather conditions (relative humidity, temperature, wind speed), fuel moisture levels, fuel model type (grassland vs woodland), and firing techniques (backing, flanking, or headfires).

Some burns are hot.
Some burns are not.
Fire monitoring after a “hot” burn.  The organic litter was fully consumed, vegetation was fully consumed, and char heights were 6’ high.   
Fire monitoring after a “cool” burn. The burn coverage was incomplete, the lower layers of leaves were totally unburned even in burned areas, and char heights were <1/4’ high.

We have a network of photo monitoring points that we use to track plant community changes through time.  Basically, we have GPS points and just go back to the same locations every few years to take photos facing in a standardized direction.  Simple, right? 

Permanent photo point locations are a simple way to track vegetation community changes through time. We have been coupling that data set of photos with fire severity monitoring data.

For the past eight years or so, we have been using a greatly simplified version of the National Park Service’s Fire Monitoring Handbook protocol to assess burn severity.  If you don’t want to read their whole protocol, just jump to page 110.  Our version of burn severity monitoring is as follows.

  • Take post-burn photos at each permanent photo point monitoring location in the burned unit.
  • At each monitoring location, walk 5 meters in the direction that the photo was taken.  Within a 3 m radius, record the percent burn coverage. 
  • Assess the burn severity category for the substrate layer (duff/leaf litter) and vegetation layers using the categories below (this is our modification of the NPS categories). 
  • The maximum char height is averaged for the nearest three woodies and recorded. 
  • We use the ESRI Field Maps app to take the photos and enter the data into a geodatabase.  Easy-peasy!
Ecologist Nick Budde, our prescribed fire coordinator, doing post-burn monitoring. Thanks to Nick for adapting the NPS categories and developing our burn monitoring protocol!

We try to do the burn monitoring reasonably soon after a burn is completed – if we wait too long then the vegetation can green up or leaves blow around which obscures the monitoring criteria.  To make things efficient during a busy burn season, we can sometimes do the monitoring at the end of the burn while the rest of the crew is finishing mopping up or packing up equipment. If the burn days are too busy, we try to do the monitoring the next morning if we need to go back and see if any trees re-ignited on the firebreak or if any other fire hazards have developed.  All it takes is a little extra professional discipline and time management to collect burn severity data and post-burn photos during the course of a burn season. 

FPDWC Burn Severity Coding Matrix

Category 5 – Unburned

Category 4 – Scorched

  • Substrate: Litter partially blackened; wood/leaf structures unchanged at ground surface
  • Vegetation: Foliage of sedges/grasses partially blackened and attached to supporting stems or twigs; stems of forbs and small woodies unburned to lightly blackened at base

Category 3.5 – Patchily Lightly Burned

  • Substrate & vegetation: Roughly equal areas that are scorched and lightly burned

Category 3 – Lightly Burned

  • Substrate: Less than 30% bare soil; litter and moss charred to partially consumed, but some plant parts are still discernable; most small to medium woody debris is scorched; logs are unburned to scorched but not charred
  • Vegetation: Unconsumed vegetation of sedges/cool season grasses more than 1” high; most warm season grasses consumed to 3” tall or higher; most stems of forbs and small woodies scorched; some stems may still be standing

Category 2.5 – Lightly to Moderately Burned

  • Substrate: Litter and moss partially to mostly consumed; 30-80% bare dirt; most small to medium woody debris is scorched to partially consumed; most logs are scorched to charred
  • Vegetation: Unconsumed vegetation of sedges/cool season grasses less than 1” high; most forbs and warm season grasses consumed to less than 2” tall; most stems of small woodies scorched to partially consumed 

Category 2 – Moderately Burned

  • Substrate: Litter fully consumed; 80-100% bare soil; most small to medium woody debris partially to mostly consumed; logs are deeply charred to mostly consumed 
  • Vegetation: Sedges/cool season grasses fully consumed; most forbs and warm season grasses fully consumed; stems of small woodies partially to completely consumed 

Category 1 – Heavily Burned

  • Substrate: Mineral soil visibly altered, often reddish; litter and duff completely consumed; even sound logs are deeply charred to completely consumed
  • Vegetation: All plant parts consumed leaving some or no major stems or trunks, any left are deeply charred; no unburned grasses above the root crown
  • We don’t use this category because our prescribed burns are not done under extreme (red flag) conditions and they have not resulted in these severe effects.

Fire Intensity Monitoring – Conclusion

In time, burn severity monitoring is giving us a standardized way to characterize the intensity of a burn.  In combination with the seasonality and frequency of burning, it gives us a more nuanced way to assess how prescribed burns are affecting plant communities.

Prescribed burning is one of the ecological management activities that has higher risks to human and wildlife safety.  That makes it important to make sure that the prescribed burns are meeting management objectives.  It doesn’t take much extra time to assess the burn severity criteria outlined here, and to accumulate data to learn better how fire intensity can influence vegetation communities.  No need to wait – start using a standardized protocol to monitor your fire’s effects during this burn season!

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Nachusa Grasslands hiring for two positions

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

The Nature Conservancy is hiring for a full time permanent Restoration Ecologist. The job is open another two weeks. We are looking for someone who is a good person and has skills like these: Prescribed fire, chainsaw, skid loader, tractor, hauling such heavy equipment, weed work, seed harvesting. And on the soft skill side of things someone who wants to be a leader and mentor, can work with the public and colleagues. This link takes you to a list of job openings. Type Nachusa at top and it takes you there. Job number is 55855 if that helps. https://url.us.m.mimecastprotect.com/s/jsh6C9rAj8skm9EgECof6Hq_nAi?domain=careers.nature.org

The Friends of Nachusa Grasslands is hiring an Executive Director. This would be their first employee. They are an amazing set of citizens who are very productive. This would be a fun job for someone special. https://www.nachusagrasslands.org/executive-director.html

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PTO Blower – Clearing Firebreaks

Posted on October 24, 2024 by Mike Saxton

By Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at Shaw Nature Reserve

There are certain tools/pieces of equipment that once you have them, you wonder 1) why didn’t I buy this sooner? 2) how did we ever get by without this? I think a PTO driven blower for firebreak prep is one of those tools.

Here at Shaw Nature Reserve, we have 19 miles of hiking trails and gravel roads, many of which serve as firebreaks. Whether blowing mowed tallgrass and clearing leaves from trails, a PTO blower saves time and resources.

Our roads are 12ft wide gravel then a 3ft mowed green shoulder. We then do a fuel reduction line, mowing down tall grass prairie with a 5ft Woods mower deck. We blow the mowed debris into the unit. We have essentially a ~28ft wild break along our gravel roads. Pretty sweet! Blowing off the fuel reduction line isn’t critical but it sure feels good on a windy day with low Rh.  

We have a few miles of woodland firebreaks. While we can blow them off in advance…we still have to make a return trip day-of to ensure the breaks are clean. More leaves always come down & high winds can move leaves back onto previously blown roads/trails. The morning of a burn can be hectic with loading equipment, checking and rechecking gear, making maps, etc. The ability to have 1 person head out on a tractor and clear/check miles of woodland fire break is a huge resource saver. It would take 2-4 people with backpack blowers to achieve what 1 person can do on a tractor.

We have had a buffalo turbine PTO blower for 7 years. It has performed well for us. Bill Kleiman wrote a blog post back in 2020 about various ways of blowing/clearing fire breaks

  • Airflow is ~10,000 CFM (a nice Stihl backpack blower does about 900CFM at 195 mph)
  • Air speed is ~175 MPH  (if you walk in front of it…it’ll blow your feet out from under you)
  • Requires 20 horsepower at the PTO
  • The cone rotates 360 degrees with an electric switch. But you have to throttle all the way down in order to overcome the force of the wind to turn the cone with the electric motor.
  • The unit is long which can make slaloming through trees difficult. It’s tricky when going over really uneven terrain because it’s so long and thus easy to bottom out.
  • Purchase price in 2017 was $4,800.

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Brush and fire frequency

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

The fall purple leaves of gray dogwood show in a patch mowed one time in 1994

On a recent blogpost I mentioned that I mowed a gray dogwood patch, Cornus racemosa, in about 1994, so 3 decades back. I only mowed it one time with a rotary mower on the back of a tractor. The dogwood clone had stalks about six feet tall. Since then we have been frequently burning this unit to keep various brush in check. It appears that those fires kept top killing the dogwood where it would re-sprout again as is shows in these current photos.

If we had time on our hands, we could treat each stem with basal bark herbicide but this low patch seems ok to me, with various grasses and forbs intermixing with it.

The same dogwood patch as above
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Weed management

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman, Director Nachusa Grasslands, TNC

The recent GRN workshop was all tour based, with 5 themed tours that ran concurrently every two hours over two days. All participants could go on all 5 tours. I led the tour with the theme of weeds. We covered a lot of ground in footsteps and concepts.

Birdsfoot trefoil: We stopped at a unit with a 40 year history of invasive birdsfoot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus. The trefoil was planted for pasture forage and then later the pasture became part of Nachusa. We have experienced the long duration of the seed bank of these legumes as they continue to emerge. We have reduced their occurrence with about 15 years of careful backpack spraying and the field looks good at this time of year with only a few trefoil plants encountered as we hiked around.

The last two seasons we have tried boom spraying a pre-emergent herbicide, Esplanade 200, on the prairie planting in early spring. This kills all seeds emerging, good and bad, but it gives our weed crew a chance to catch up with the adult trefoil plants. This shows signs of success as the field looks better than ever, but we will report out later.

Selfie by Bill

Reed canary grass: We looked at a wet meadow that once was thick with reed canary grass, Phalaris arundinacea, and is now much reduced in reed canary grass and dominated by native plants. We used grass herbicides intensively for several years from about 1993 to 1998 and then were able to spray with just backpacks with occasional tractor spot spraying since.

Sweet clover: We found that mowing about the 4th of July proved very effective on white sweet clover, with yellow sweet clover mowed a week or two before the white. Here is a recent post on that: https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2024/07/11/yellow-and-white-sweet-clover/ On the GRN blogsite there is a search bar. There are four articles on sweet clover on the site.

Lespedeza daurica and L. cuneata: These invasive legumes take a lot of work to control. We talked about the need for careful sweeping, this refers to walking back and forth across a planting. We also agreed that at least two visits per year are needed, and three would be best to get towards success. Here are a few posts on that:

https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2023/09/14/lespedeza-friend-and-foe/ https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2021/09/30/needle-in-a-haystack/ https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2021/09/09/beware-what-seed-you-buy/

Photo from the workshop, the editors of this blogsite: Julianne Mason, Mike Saxton, and Bill Kleiman

Exotic vs Invasive: I listed some species of exotic plants that I don’t think are invasive in our area: Queen Anne’s lace, dames rocket, canada thistle, garlic mustard (as frequent fire controls mustard). I also spoke of holding back on planting the native shrub Amorpha bush, Amorpha fruticosa, as I have seen it get very dense in a new planting. Gray dogwood has been controlled with one or two mowings.

I promised a crib sheet that lists some herbicides we use and that is here: https://www.nachusagrasslands.org/uploads/5/8/4/6/58466593/which_herbicide_to_use_for_various_weeds_%E2%80%93_2023.pdf

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Lively Tours of Nachusa Prairie Plantings

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bernie Buchholz, Volunteer at Nachusa Grasslands

The recent GRN conference at Nachusa Grasslands included “Prairie Tours” of new plantings and remnant restorations. It was a very experienced group with about 90% of attendees having either planted a prairie in former crop fields or having restored degraded remnants. About 90% were also working professionals and the remainder were devoted volunteers. We were a knowledgeable group.

ORGANIZATION: Nachusa has had success with an “ownership” model where individual volunteers can “own” a unit of the grasslands where, after extensive informal mentoring, they make the decisions about what to plant, how much to plant, seed harvest, and weed management. Nachusa staff provides support with some tasks like chain sawing, mowing, prescribed fire, and heavy equipment, if needed. Volunteers become quite devoted to their units, with pride being an additional motivator.

OBJECTIVES: Many attendees use maximization of plant biodiversity as the goal, which is effectively a proxy for maximizing habitat resilience and function. The group discussed plant assisted migration, but there was support for the idea that maximizing diversity with existing species builds resilience while the concept of assisted migration is developed elsewhere.

Photo by Chris Helzer

SEEDS: Nachusa’s approach to is to plant every species desired in the plantings in the very first year. For example, we don’t start with extraordinary amount of adventive plants with plans to add conservative species later. Volunteers have noted that it takes 350 to 400 hours to collect 175 species for a five-acre planting. (For more see Plant High Diversity ) Use of plant plugs is limited due to the demands of planting and watering them. Many participants shared the species they had the most trouble growing, including Comandra umbellata and Lilium philadelphicum.

Nachusa does not clean its seed of chaff. Target weights are 45 pounds per acre of which maybe 30-50% may be seed. Grasses may be up to 20% of the gross weight with Indian grass and big blue stem used vary sparingly, or not at all, depending on soil moisture and other factors.

WEEDS: Former row crop land offers relatively “clean” soil for native plantings, but there are still occasional surprises, including large amounts of yellow and white sweet clover, for example, and birdsfoot trefoil has a decades long life in the seedbank. We had a lighthearted, but thoughtful conversation about managing non-invasive weeds like wild parsnip and Queen Annes lace which are addressed only after the true invasives are dealt with. There was strong support for the  aesthetic and emotional value of eliminating highly visible but non-threatening weeds. It gets down to priorities.

FIRE: At Nachusa we burn plantings as soon as there is enough  plant matter to carry a fire which is often the second year. A new planting is usually burned annually until it is well established, which could be 5 to ten years. It is important not to burn the entire preserve at the same time for fear of diminishing insects. However, we look at plantings as part of the whole, rather than trying to burn portions of individual units.

Photo by Chris Helzer

REMNANTS: It’s a very favorable and special situation when you can simultaneously do cropland plantings and restore an adjacent remnant. Look for a comparable remnant of similar soils and contours,but with higher  plant diversity to use as a model. Eliminating non-invasive weeds like wild parsnip and Queen Anne’s lace completely can take six to seven years, while invasives like birdsfoot trefoil can persist for decades.

OVERSEEDING DEGRADED HABITAT: There was considerable discussion about the best technique for overseeding pastures. Seeding directly into existing vegetation, including dense non-native grasses, seems counterintuitive to first treating the area with herbicides. Our experience at Nachusa, however, indicates that heavy seeding into existing vegetation, when supported with frequent prescribed fire, can be very successful over a period of five to seven years. For more see  Converting Pasture to Prairie

PASSION FOR BEAUTY: The opportunity to convert  row crop land to thriving prairie is an intoxicating idea. The passion of a volunteer or professional land manager may provide the necessary dedication and hard work to make the most of a planting. There can also be ego (or hubris) compelling the volunteer to establish a great planting. Hopefully, the beauty of a diverse and functioning native grasslands is a result and reward for devotion.

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The Agony and the Ecstasy of a First Year Prairie

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By: Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at Shaw Nature Reserve – a division of the Missouri Botanical Garden – Gray Summit, MO

There are few acts more hopeful than planting prairie. We put so much effort and thought and love and care into the process and we hope for ecologically significant results. We want our efforts to translate into benefits for biodiversity and for the increased health of the land. And, perhaps a bit selfishly, we want to be proud of our good work, to show off our success, to reap the rewards of so much determination.

Left – frozen snowy ground for seed sowing of 40 acres on January 16th. Right – Restoration team mixing 1,000 pounds of hand collected, bulk milled seed.

Collecting seed, prepping the ground, sowing on a frosty winter morning…and then the hard part – the waiting. The agonizing wait. Once the seed is down, we want to chase off every bird we see feasting in the field. In the spring, we worry about getting enough rain. And sometimes about getting too much rain. Every day we’re out there expectantly watching for seedlings to emerge.

July 16 – Coeropsis tinctoria in all its glory.

Last January we sowed seed across 40 acres – mostly open fields with some open oak woods and some wet swales. This is part of a 120-acre land clearing/prairie & woodland restoration project.

• 244 total species in the mix
• All 40 acres received 1-pass of prairie seed
• ~2 acres received a wet swale mix
• ~8 acres received an open woods mix
• ~30 acres received a 2nd pass of prairie mix
• Roughly 25 pounds of bulk, milled, hand collected seed per acre
• 146 pounds of PLS purchased seed
• No big blue or Indian grass in the mix
• We are not high-mowing at any time during the growing season
• The 40-acres has been swept on foot for invasives by our crew. They report using a total of 1 gallon of herbicide per acre on Japanese stilt grass, Sericea lespedeza, and white sweet clover. More weeds than we’d like in a first year planting, of course. But extremely important to be on them from the beginning.

I walked the ground in the early summer hoping to spot seedlings. I didn’t like how much non-native brome I saw and I was impressed with the abundance of plain’s coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) growing across the site (it was seeded but also was in the seed bank). I found many, many native plants but lots of the usual suspects too: fireweed (Erechtites hieraciifolius), mare’s tail (Erigeron canadensis), ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) and fox tail (Setaria pumila). We mostly do not worry about these distrubance driven annual Ag weeds.

Left – Bidens aristosa in background (wetter swale) with sprinkling of fox tail in foreground. Right – Partridge pea, mare’s tail and plain’s coreopsis – pretty typical for a first year planting.

Yesterday I walked the planting with a hopeful optimism. Generally, I’m happy with what I saw. I found flowering Liatris pycnostachya (prairie blazing star), Salvia azurea (blue sage), Agalinis tenuifolia (slender false foxglover), Physostegia virginiana (obedient plant), and multiple other species. Vegetatively, I found lots of Silphiums (compass & rosin), Baptisias, and Partheniums (quinine).

The most important piece of context – this ground was once forested, it was then cleared and converted to row-crop agriculture. In 1925, the Missouri Botanical Garden purchased the land, describing parts of it as “wasted farm ground”. It was then mowed for decades to be kept open. Then they planted blue grass and ran cattle on it. When mowing/grazing ceased (ca. 1960) it went through old field succession. Then we cleared the trees and are now asking the land to become a diverse prairie restoration. We need to be patient with the land and to attempt to understand what it wants to be and what it can be.

The Agony

A few patches of what I think is Bromus japonicus (Japenese brome). This area had been old-field succesional closed-canopy cedars and mesophytic hardwoods for decades…so it took us by surprise. There are native seedlings in and around the Brome, but not as many as we’d like.

Not extensive but some patches of a Digitaria that might persist. Mostly thin enough that native plants co-occur.

Large portions of the 40 acres have a spattering of fox tail. Some areas have nearly none while a few small areas have thickets.

The Ecstasy

Eryngium yuccifolium (Rattlesnake master), Monarda fistulosa (bee balm), Baptisia, Aesclepias, Lespedeza capitata (Round headed bush clover), Parthenium (quinine). These plants are growing around the remnants of a stump from the land clearing.

Obedient plant flowering with Baptisia, Salvia, Boltonia, Coreopsis and Aesclepias within 2ft.

Porcupine grass (hand-seeded in clusters across the unit – marked by pin flag), with yarrow, Liatris, and Parthenium.

We will be planting 40-acres of prairie over each of the following two winters. We will take the lessons learned from this first 40 and apply them to our subsequent efforts. This planting isn’t perfect but considering the context, we’re happy with these early results! And the planting will, hopefully, only get better with age and continued care.

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Weed management tips

Posted on August 1, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman, Nachusa Grasslands Project Director, TNC

If you visit an invasive weed occurrence only once a year to treat it the weed may increase.

If you visit the occurrence twice you will break even and maybe gain.

If you visit three or more times you will make great progress.

The photo below shows a nail pouch that clips to my belt.  Those are king devil flower heads in there.  I pluck the heads and spray the basal rosettes.  This is easy and I call it fun.

Year round I have a quart sprayer of some herbicide in my vehicle sitting in a five gallon pail to keep it upright.  In winter it is a basal bark herbicide solution since it won’t freeze.  In summer I still have the basal bark spray bottle, but I also carry a bottle of  water based broadleaf herbicide.  Lately it has been a solution of 2% Garlon 3A with a bit of blue dye.  It is very pleasant to hop out of the truck, grab a squirt bottle, and treat an autumn olive or a birdsfoot trefoil, without having to put my backpack on, or make a note to return to it.

Below is a jug of broadleaf herbicide.  It is marked  RTU which stands for Ready To Use, meaning it is not concentrate but diluted, with a surfactant and colorant added.  I carry about a gallon in the jug as it is easier to fill the bottles that way.  I have a funnel with me.  Or you can fill the squirt bottles from your backpack sprayer.

Below are five squirt bottle brands.  I am not sold on any of them.  Elsewhere in this blogsite I review squirt bottles. Some of these bottles cost very little. The Zep bottle purchased in hardware stores in the cleaning section are pretty reliable. We tend to keep the solution in these bottles for months so it is no surprise that they stop spraying sometimes.

Below is a repurposed Chlorox cleaning solution bottle.  On the other side I used a label maker to mark it as “Broadleaf herbicide”.  This model will spray every drop as that pickup tube comes from the very bottom front, so you don’t pump air when the bottle is tilted down. I liked it but then it quit spraying after a few weeks.

Here is a comparison of a Stihl and Birchmeier squirt bottles: https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2020/11/05/hand-held-herbicide-sprayer-comparison/

Below you are looking down at one big invasive birdsfoot trefoil with the yellow flowers.  Carrying a hand sprayer means it is easy to bend down and gather up that sprawling plant as I did here and then squirt the middle of the “braid” with a dose.  The prairie dock should survive.

I have found that if I use basal bark herbicide I can just spray a bit where the BFT plants emerge and the plant will die with very little off target impacts.

Below is a repurposed class A foam container to hold water for a simple hand washing station.  I drilled a hole in the edge.  Just lay it over and it trickles out water.  Sometimes I carry soap but just the water is very nice to have around.  Don’t fill it all the way, a gallon or two last a few days.

Below is a plastic hinged box to hold items useful in weed work.  Disposable rubber gloves, blue tree marking paint, sun screen, ear plugs, paper towels, safety glasses, a little bottle of eye saline, MSDS sheets.

Of course a backpack is a common item to carry in my truck.  The Chapin below we tried.  I like its folding handle.  The clip seems to hold the nozzle wand.  The wand is metal.  It has a padded shoulder straps and back pad.  The fill lid is deep and wide which means less splashing on fill up.  We had issues with the pressure being too low and the shut off of the spray was not crisp and so it dripped a bit. So we did not continue with these.

We have used the Solo brand for a long time and some of them go for years.

Below a partially clogged screen that Solo has in some of their tips. I find these clog frequently and usually I pitch the screen. It needs cleaning every day or two of use.

This pack came in with a tag stating it would not spray. I could feel the pressure in the pump was fine. The tip was very clogged. We reuse 2.5 gallon jugs and sometimes a paper from the cap falls into the jug, then into the pack, and this happens. It looks like shredded paper.

Below, a cable tie acts to hold up the folding pump handle of the Solo.

Below, the Stihl sprayers are nice. We have been buying these as they are easy to buy at our local Ace, they spray well, and so far are holding up to our abuses. Mike Saxton reports they work well too. You can see that we assign packs to individuals, with the duct tape noting the herbicide in the tank. The Stihl does not have a good system to hold the nozzle wand when in storage.

I encourage our crew to just put in 1.5 gallons of mix to keep the weight low.  This pack full would feel like you were backpacking the A.T..   Hopefully we walk more than we spray.  Carry a 2 gallon jug of RTU mix in the truck.

Weed work is a marathon.

Carry the tools you need and be happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Drones for Herbicide Application

Posted on July 25, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By: Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship at Shaw Nature Reserve

Across the Midwest, many prairie restoration efforts seek to transform degraded pastures or row crop fields into robust and vibrant plant communities. In this post-agricultural context, restoration practitioners typically utilize standard ag equipment like harrows, discs, boom sprayers (PTO driven from tractors or electric sprayer rigs in the back of a UTV) for site preparation before planting.

Areas of former ag usage usually are hazard free (rocks, stumps) and can be readily and safely traversed by standard equipment. But what do you do with a 40 acre field of stumps that you want to restore to prairie? When conventional spray equipment cannot be used, new tools are needed. Enter drones.

Before and after image showing extensive cedar and mesophytic tree removal

With the help of a contractor, drone herbicide application of invasive species and for general site preparation for native seed addition was completed in a stump-filled 40 acres that we will plant this winter.

Drone specs:

  • About 12ft wide from propeller tip to propeller tip
  • Carries 8 gallons of herbicide
  • Usually sprays 3 to 4 gallons per acre (mix is at a high concentration and within the label)
  • Drone has a 7.5 min flight time
  • One battery takes 6 minutes to charge
  • Drone can identify and avoid hazards
  • Drone flies a grid, knows when it runs out of herbicide, and automatically returns to fill up location where staff refills. The drone flies out and picks up where it left off.
  • Drone flies roughly 12ft over top the vegetation.
  • Treatment width per pass is roughly 25ft
Drone sprayer is roughly the size of a Kawasaki Mule Pro

Drones thrive where conventional equipment can struggle:

  • Fields with high tension power lines
  • Small, odd shaped fields in a forested landscape
  • Post-logging areas with high density of stumps

We provided the herbicide to the contractor and the rate for the drone to fly was somewhere around $36/acre.

Contractor hauls enough water for most large jobs and mixes everything on-site.
Hand is on the battery. 8 gallon spray tank behind. Carbon propeller in foreground.

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