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Managers may have an additional smooth brome control option if burning can be repeated. In this study, burns before tiller elongation in March and April resulted in a progressive reduction in smooth brome biomass in 1988-90, although not in 1989-91 (Figure 3). The results in 1988-90 and those of Anderson and Bailey (1980) and Becker (1989) suggest that annual burns generally conducted too early to kill tillers still may have some negative effect on smooth brome. However, managers should be aware that a single burn before tiller elongation could enhance smooth brome through beneficial factors associated with litter reduction, such as light enrichment. In 1991, under above-normal precipitation, biomass production of smooth brome more than doubled the year after a single tiller-emergence burn (Figure 3). In addition, in another study at Mead, Nebraska, Willson and Stubbendieck (1995) found that early spring burning of smooth brome-dominated sites during a dry period led to less soil moisture and lower soil temperatures as compared to early burned big bluestem-dominated sites. In areas where smooth brome and big bluestem are codominant, a burn before tiller elongation could benefit smooth brome by minimizing conditions necessary for early growth of competing big bluestem, such as increased soil temperature (Hulbert 1988).

Managers should delay burning smooth brome to a subsequent year if tillers show an inflorescence (i.e., are heading). Although this study showed significant reductions in tiller density and biomass following burning at heading and at flowering, the reductions for biomass were not as great as those at tiller elongation (Figure 1). Furthermore, this study showed that smooth brome did not recover to preburn levels the year after a burn at the tiller elongation stage but did the year after a burn at the heading stage (Figures 2 and 3).