Management+History

=Management History=

This page serves as an online record of how the preserve has been managed. If you have records of anything else that has been done to the Ames High Prairie, please email Mike Todd at michael.todd@ames.k12.ia.us. It would be useful to eventually transfer all non-electronic records onto this website.

Here is a copy of the most recent management plan for the preserve, it is the 2003 revision:

To the right is the current map that is referenced in the management records below. Here is a Microsoft Word copy of the map:

Prescribed Burn History of the Ames High Prairie
We saw our first Monarch caterpillar of the season, harvested some porcupine grass and spread it in the area east of 5, and setup a plot of wild parsnips at different stages of flower development to see if viable seeds would be produced (we also added some musk thistle flowers to see if they would produce seed).
 * __6/21/2011__**

__**6/14 - 6/23/2011**__ Wild Parsnip was pulled in the area shown below by a variety of people including Ian Peeler, Matt Williams, Diana Zhang, Maddy Kolb, TC Ringgenberg, Tommy Norris, Jim Murdock, and Mike Todd.

Matt Williams and Mike Todd cut and hauled out the flowers of the few musk thistles that popped up in area 1B (the area we cleared a lot from last year).
 * __6/16/2011__**

Mike Todd and Jim Murdock started mowing the area that was seeded in the early spring with last falls seed collection efforts (3B). You can see the exact area in the image below:
 * __6/14/2011__**

__**6/13/2011**__ Wild Parsnip coverage was mapped using GPS. It will be good to compare this to next year's crop, after we pull the parsnip again this year. We pulled it from these similar areas last year.

__**4/18/2011 - Present**__ Ames High Environmental Science classes started to clear the area east of area 5 (outside of the preserve). The plan is to put in some sort of rainscaping features in order to manage stormwater - there is approximately 2.6 acres of the high school roof and land area that drains to this area and it has created a small channel that has been eroding part of the prairie. We will also plant the area using seed from Doolittle Prairie.

__**3/21 and 3/22/2011**__ Ames High Environmental Science classes spread the seed collected in the fall of 2010 from sections 1 and 2, into section 3B.

@Prairie Management 2010

Here you can see what the preserve was surveyed as in the 1800's: So you can see that only the south-west corner of the preserve was full of trees in the 1800's, the rest was prairie and it will take a lot of management if we want to restore and maintain the original land cover situation.