Start Date
03/26/2025
End Date
03/26/2025
Description
Native Grasslands Restoration: Is Fire Needed?
Bert Harris, Ph.D.
Harris will begin by covering the Clifton Institute’s recent research on remnant Piedmont grasslands. He'll discuss how the Institute is using these results to set goals for meadow plantings and grassland restoration projects including the 50 acres that are burned annually at the Institute. He’ll then talk about the Institute’s 100-acre grassland restoration experiment that is testing eight different methods (e.g. fire, mowing, tilling, planting, herbicide) to convert non-native fields to native meadows. He'll finish by covering how even the timing of prescribed fire can affect the resulting plant communities and pollinator habitat.
Burning on the Run: Prescribed Burns in the Small Scale Landscape
Fritz Reuter
Prescribed fire need not be limited to expansive ecological restorations, but can also apply to smaller scale residential and commercial properties. Fritz Reuter is the rare bird who has successfully advocated for and incorporated this highly productive tool into a small landscape design/build practice. He will demonstrate how his “burn on the run” techniques have resulted in the type of vegetative vigor that only a practice done for thousands of years - before centuries-long wholesale suppression - could re-offer. He will also discuss how he advocates for and explains the benefits of prescribed burning to his clients.
Distance Learning
Yes
Course Equivalency
No
Subjects
Rural Landscape
Urban Planning & Design
Health, Safety and Welfare
Yes
Hours
1.25
Learning Outcomes
1. Learn how remnant plant communities can inform wildflower meadow plantings.
2. Learn about the promise and limitations of using prescribed fire to establish and manage meadows.
To gain insight into the basic history of fire as an ecological management tool in North America, and to hammer home that concept: that fire is a tool and not a magic wand within our management toolbox, though it can certainly seem to possess magical effects when implemented effectively.
To gain insight into the nuanced incorporation of fire and controlled burning as a facilitatory measure or modern management principle, in the sense of of it being a more acceptable type of disturbance to catalyze desirous results within varying stages of a landscape project or goal compared to other contemporary methods.
Instructors
Bert Harris & Fritz Reuter
Course Codes
Provider
New Directions in the American Landscape