September 29, 2000

Commentary by Roger Martin Martin writes about research at KU for Kansas media and in a webzine. Contact Martin at rmartin@kucr.ku.edu or (785) 864-7239. Martin also can be heard on KANU 91.5 FM public radio Previous articles Archive Subscribe now to receive KU News by email

KU produces new map of Kansas vegetation

By Roger Martin

Grasses rule Kansas.

They start off tall in the east, where bluestem is king. Out west they grow stubby, with sideoats grama and buffalo grass hunkering down against the wind.

In between is a mix.

If you can see a tree from your window, be thankful.

The prairie that the settlers viewed when they crossed the state in the early 19th century had been swept clean of trees by lightning fires.

Such fires, as well as wet years alternating with intense droughts, are the stuff of which prairies are made.

In 1974, a University of Kansas geographer named A.W. Kuchler produced the third vegetation map of Kansas ever drawn. It was a map of how Kuchler imagined Kansas had looked 150 years before. He constructed it from masses of data about soil type, climate, topographic features and other local conditions.

By the end of this year, a new vegetation-cover map of the state, reflecting its contemporary condition, will be ready. Among others, credit KU's Chris Lauver, Steve Egbert and Aimee Stewart, affiliates of the Kansas Biological Survey, the Department of Geography and the Kansas Applied Remote Sensing Program.

The new map is the product of computers crunching satellite data into an image that shows about 40 kinds of land cover. It contains a level of detail that would have brought tears of joy to Kuchler's eyes - though the altered landscape it represents might have brought a different kind of tears.

The KU researchers presented a draft of their map alongside Kuchler's map at a professional meeting in San Antonio in late August.

They told those who attended that today about 40 percent of Kansas is covered by natural or near-natural vegetation. The other 60 percent is put to agricultural uses.

About half of that 60 percent is cropland. The rest goes to non-native grasses like brome and to Conservation Reserve Program sites.

Heavy grazing, destruction of about half of the state's wetlands and intense logging in eastern Kansas have disturbed the natural landscape, Lauver says. In the uplands, forest and woods have expanded as we've learned how to put out fires.

Tallgrass prairie - the kind in the Flint Hills - covered about 27 percent of the state on Kuchler's map; on the new map it occupies about 12 percent. In southeast Kansas, a lot of cross timbers forest has been lost.

In western Kansas, sand prairie, alkali sacaton mixed prairie and salt marsh have been severely reduced from their original size, Lauver says.

KU is a partner with Kansas State University on this project. Kansas State is producing Kansas wildlife habitat maps and land-ownership maps.

When all of the maps, which are digitally stored, are overlaid on each other, Lauver says, you'll be able to see where there is great plant and animal diversity and whether that diversity is in any way protected.

The result will be what Lauver, who doesn't want to rile anybody up, calls "conservation opportunities."

Kuchler - a man so taken with Kansas' geographic past that he produced a map that was 150 years out of date when it was still hot off the presses - would, no doubt, approve.