Fall-Prescribed Burn and Spring-Applied Herbicide Effects on Canada Thistle Control and Soil Seedbank in a Northern Mixed-Grass Prairie
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Prescribed burning in Theodore Roosevelt National Park has played an important role in maintaining a natural ecosystem. However, changes in plant community dynamics caused by burning may have led to an invasion of weedy species such as Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense L.). The objectives of this research were to evaluate the effect of a fall burn before spring herbicide application on Canada thistle control and to evaluate the soil seedbank within Canada thistle infestations. Canada thistle stem densities initially were higher in the burned compared with the nonburned areas because plants were slower to emerge in the nonburned treatments. However, the effect was short-lived, and Canada thistle densities were similar in the burned and nonburned treatments by the second season following the prescribed burn. Canada thistle control averaged 78% 60 days after treatment with clopyralid, clopyralid plus triclopyr, or picloram when spring applied whether or not application was preceded by a prescribed burn. Control declined to less than 60% by 363 days after application. Grass cover increased from an average of 5% before treatment to 37% and 46% 60 and 425 days after herbicide application, respectively, regardless of burn treatment. Forb cover increased following a prescribed burn but was unaffected by herbicide treatment. Overall the number and variety of species in the soil seedbank was not affected by a prescribed burn. A total of 74 species (56 forbs, 13 grasses, and 5 other mesic species) were found in the soil seedbank. However, the majority of the soil seedbank consisted of nondesirable low seral and invasive species including Canada thistle and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.), which accounted for over 80% of the total germinated seed. Although a prescribed burn caused an initial increase in Canada thistle density and cover, the greater long-term concern may be the lack of desirable species present in the seedbank to replace Canada thistle once the weed is controlled.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".