Moody Ecology
Douglas County Prairie Pastures
Prairie haymeadows, with their high plant diversity, are important refuges for prairie plants, insects, and microbes, but tend to be relatively small. Prairie pastures, unplowed native grasslands used to graze cattle, are an important ecological resource. Though they tend have fewer plant species than prairie haymeadows, prairie pastures are often much large, providing more extensive habitat for grassland birds, pollinators, and other animals. With soil intact, prairie pastures are also reservoirs for prairie plants and microbes.
Prairie pastures, in general, have not been studied as much as prairie haymeadows. In 2022, I began a project documenting the native prairie pastures in Douglas County, Kansas in collaboration with Jennifer Delisle (Kansas Biological Survey), that was funded by the Douglas County Natural and Cultural Heritage Grant Program.
We drove over 600 miles of Douglas County roads, we quickly assessing from the roadside over 150 grasslands, identifying 56 potentially high-quality prairie pastures. Of these, we visited 16 prairie pastures with boots on the ground to conduct detailed plant inventories. This work allows us to begin to understand the distribution and quality of prairie pastures in western Douglas County, which is important for land management and conservation.
As sharing our work was an important part of this project, we created a StoryMap website about the project, which you can view here.
Prairie Pasture Wildflower Gallery
Though the prairie pastures we visited were predominately native prairie grasses, such as big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans), and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), we found many native wildflowers.
