During
2004 and 2005, we identified the remaining high-quality prairies, forests, and
other natural areas in Douglas, Johnson, Leavenworth, Miami, and Wyandotte Counties.
During
2004 and 2005, we identified the remaining high-quality prairies, forests, and
other natural areas in Douglas, Johnson, Leavenworth, Miami, and Wyandotte Counties.
We used remote sensing, recent and historical aerial photography, and our knowledge of previously mapped sites in the Kansas Natural Heritage Inventory database to identify potential natural areas for this study. We then drove all roads in each of the five counties to find additional locations of high-quality prairies and forests. We were especially interested in finding promising sites of 5 acres or more.
Once
we received permission from a landowner to survey a tract of land, our field
crews collected information at each site, including a description of the vegetative
community and the names of all plant species found.
High-quality
natural areas are plant communities that closely resemble the native tallgrass
prairies and oak-hickory forests that existed before European settlement. In
presettlement times, most of this area was prairie. As settlers arrived, they
plowed prairies to plant crops, cut down forests along riverbanks, and suppressed
fires in the grasslands.
Suppression of fire led to woody growth in the prairies; creation of farmland also reduced prairie acreage.
In the 1850s, prairie covered
most of the area in Douglas, Johnson, Leavenworth, Miami, and Wyandotte Counties.
Our project has determined
just how little of that prairie remains, as Table 1 shows.
County |
1850s
Prairie Acreage |
1850s
Estimated Percent of High-Quality Prairie |
2005 Prairie Acreage |
2005 |
Douglas |
285,158 |
94% |
1,395 |
0.5% |
Miami |
332,214 |
90% |
941 |
0.3% |
Johnson |
256,318 |
84% |
16 |
0.006% |
Leavenworth |
271,872 |
90% |
475 |
0.17% |
Wyandotte |
76,320 |
75% |
None |
None |
Note.—Data for the 1850s are from the Kansas State Board of Agriculture (1877). The data for 2005 are for parcels greater than 5 acres that the Kansas National Heritage Inventory has identified or confirmed remain (see Section 4 in the full report).
The primary natural areas
in these five counties are prairie and forest plant communities. Of 251 prairie
sites we visited in the area, we found 126 high-quality prairies larger than
5 acres each. We found 24 high-quality forest sites, most of which were larger
than 10 acres each. These findings, added to previous documentation, results
in a total of 166 high-quality prairie sites and 38 high-quality forests that
are documented in the Kansas National Heritage Inventory database for the 5-county
area.
High-quality prairie communities include Unglaciated Tallgrass Prairie, Glaciated Tallgrass Prairie, and Low (Wet) Prairie. High-quality forest communities include Oak-Hickory Forest, Ash-Elm-Hackberry Forest, Cottonwood-Sycamore Floodplain Forest, Cross Timbers-Post Oak Woodland, and Maple-Basswood Forest.
Each high-quality plant community found is capable of sustaining known or possible rare species of interest. Specifically, we found Regal fritillary butterflies at 76 sites in the inventory, as well as Red-shouldered hawks, Broad-winged hawks, Red-eyed vireos, and Prairie mole crickets.
In addition, we found 29 previously unknown populations of Mead's milkweed, a federally protected species that is listed as threatened, and we confirmed the continued presence of 6 previously known populations as well. These findings, added to previous documentation, results in a total of 87 populations of Mead's milkweed that are documented in the Kansas Natural Heritage Inventory database for the five-county area.
We calculated the percentages of remaining high-quality native prairie in each county and compared them to the estimates of native prairie present in the 1850s. We found that by 2005, native prairie was 0.5% of Douglas County (94% in the 1850s), 0.3% of Miami County (90% in the 1850s), 0.006% of Johnson County (84% in the 1850s), 0.17% of Leavenworth County (90% in the 1850s), and 0.0% of Wyandotte County (75% in the 1850s).
Of
significant concern, we are able to document that Douglas County has lost 29%
of its acreage of its high-quality tallgrass prairie remnants (the hay meadows)
during the last 17 years. This documentation also demonstrates the need for
protection of some of these remaining sites.
We have provided county maps showing the locations of remaining high-quality prairies and forests in the five-county area. We suggest several management recommendations for landowners and opportunities for both landowners and planning commissions to conserve some of their biologically rich tracts of land.
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