prescribed fire

There are plans to spray herbicide aerially in the future, which has drawn both support and criticism. Herbicides, prescribed fire, and other methods are used each year to manage invasive species and sagebrush.

Scientists still aren't sure what maintains the Great Plains Grasslands and keeps them separate from forests. A very common hypothesis is that there are climatic differences between the areas where each type of ecosystem forms. But the boundaries between the two ecosystems have been slowly disintegrating since around 1850, which caused a U.S. Forest Service research ecologist to wonder if something else was responsible for keeping them separate.

A recent study called upon the Western U.S. to increase its prescribed burn practice as a preventative for large-scale wildfires. Prescribed burning is…