Defoliation impacts on Festuca campestris (Rydb.) plants exposed to wildfire
Issue Date
2003-07-01Keywords
seasonal developmentflowering
grazing management
Festuca altaica
primary productivity
harvest date
Festuca campestris
fire ecology
Alberta
tillering
precipitation
biomass
range management
defoliation
defoliation intensity
deferment
etiolated growth
herbage yields
resilience
tillers
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Bogen, A. D., Bork, E. W., & Willms, W. D. (2003). Defoliation impacts on Festuca campestris (Rydb.) plants exposed to wildfire. Journal of Range Management, 56(4), 375-381.Publisher
Society for Range ManagementJournal
Journal of Range ManagementAdditional Links
https://rangelands.org/Abstract
Wildfires commonly occur in the Fescue Prairie of Alberta, but little information exists to provide a basis for making grazing recommendations after burning. A wildfire in April 1999 provided an opportunity to study the effect of season and intensity of post-burn defoliation on foothills rough fescue (F. campestris Rydb.) in southwestern Alberta. A 3 (date of defoliation) x 2 (defoliation intensity) factorial experiment with 10 replicates (plants) was established in both a burned and a non-burned grassland and analyzed as a nested design. Plants were defoliated once during active vegetative growth (17 May), inflorescence development (2 July), or dormancy (30 September), at either 5 or 15-cm clipped stubble heights in the first growing season after fire. Burning increased tiller numbers by 54% compared to non-burned plants but reduced plant ANPP by 51% in the second growing season. While a single defoliation of burned plants, particularly early in the year, had little effect on growth, delaying defoliation into July decreased tillers 1 year later. Increasing defoliation intensity had the greatest impact on non-burned plants, reducing plant height (15%) as well as tiller (21%) and plant (32%) ANPP in the second year. May defoliation reduced etiolated growth 1 year later regardless of burn treatment. A single grazing event after wildfire does not necessarily appear to detrimentally affect rough fescue; however, the low herbage available immediately after fire may not justify the increased risk to the plant with subsequent grazing.Type
textArticle
Language
enISSN
0022-409Xae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.2307/4004042