KU professor leads cultural burn at Field Station

A prescribed burn led by a KU professor at the KU Field Station Saturday morning will help ensure the area’s biodiversity and soil health in the future. 

Melinda Adams, KU assistant professor, worked with Brett Ramey and MK Kerron to place the initial fire on Saturday. 

Good Fire is Indigenous-led prescribed fire conducted with the goal of ecological, cultural and social restoration, according to Adams, N’dee San Carlos Apache.

In cultural burns, participants use hand tools to guide the fire, observe how the plants are responding to the fire and avoid putting fuel, such as propane, into the plants.

These cultural fires repair degraded soil and increase biodiversity while reducing the overgrowth that contributes to uncontrolled fires. Cultural burns don’t harm native plants, many of which are adapted to fire and even need fire for their seeds to germinate.

See full story and photo album from The Lawrence Times.