Agrarian Landscape Transition

Agrarian Landscape Transition in the Flint Hills of Kansas: Legacies and Resilience

Gerad Middendorf, Derrick Cline and Leonard Bloomquist

KansasStateUniversity

Introduction

The Flint Hills of east-central Kansas contain the largest remaining area of unplowed tallgrass prairie in North America (about 1.6 million ha). What remains today is a small fraction of the estimated pre-European extent of the tallgrass prairie, which stretched over substantial portions of what is now Illinois, northern Missouri, Iowa, southern Minnesota, and the eastern edges of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas. Before European immigration into the area, the region was home to various American Indian tribes, migrating buffalo and other large ungulates that fed off the abundant grasses. The American Indians depended on the buffalo as a means of sustenance, and recognized that management of the grasses ensured their return in the spring. The prairie has persisted in the Flint Hills for both biophysical and socioeconomic reasons, and has been one of the key elements in the development of the region. In addition to being steeply sloped in some places, much of the Flint Hills uplands has a layer of cherty limestone near the surface. The shallow and rocky soils precluded plowing by early Euro-American settlers and their successors. Additionally, since the arrival of cattle in significant numbers in the 1860s-1870s, two key range management practices (burning and grazing) have helped to maintain the structure and function of the tallgrass ecosystem. Yet, the land use regimes have undergone change since Euro-American arrival, thus the human signature on the land is by no means a static one. This chapter documents the salient landscape transitions in the region during the past 150 years, and how these transitions have co-evolved with changes in the socioeconomic context.

To accomplish this we examine changes in the political economy of the region from early settlement to the present, and link these transitions with changes in the agrarian landscape. Those changes include: (1) the transition from American Indian to Euro-American land use patterns; (2) the expansion of the agricultural economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; (3) drought and depression during the inter-war years; (4) agricultural intensification of the post-WWII period; and (5) a set of current issues we discuss under the rubric of conservation, including urban edge development, fire suppression, invasive species and the current institutional context with which contemporary land use decisions are made.

Our approach begins with the recognition that ecosystems and social systems have conventionally been conceptualized separately from each other, even though there has long been recognition of their interconnectedness. Humans are increasingly recognized as being part of virtually all ecosystems – in most cases for a very long time – and thus it is now less tenable to attempt to conceptualize them separately. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills was long co-evolving with those peoples that had migrated over the BeringStraits and southward into the Great Plains (Reichman 1987). Conventional accounts have at times either portrayed these lands as generally underutilized by humans before European arrival, or alternatively as kept in equilibrium by “ecologically minded” American Indians. Viewing this environment asa social ecosystem allows for the recognition that American Indians and Euro-Americans brought differentexperiences, worldviews and land use practices and therefore altered their environment in variant ways, creating different signatures on the land. At the same time the biophysical elements of the environment shape society by providing opportunities, resources and limitations, all of which are perceived differently depending on the mental models of the humans interacting with those elements.

Scholars have conceptualized the study of society and environment in various ways. Marx had a profound understanding of capitalist systems engaging with the material world for production, at the same time that production processes created the material conditions that shaped the consciousness of laborers. Weber famously emphasized the importance of understanding the predominant worldview as a way to shed light on how societies view and engage the material world. While it is not our purpose here to exhaustively review therecent theoretical developments in this area, we recognize that scholars from various disciplines have grappled with this issue in recent years. Bell (2004) has advanced the notion of ecological dialogue, which emphasizes the permanent, iterative dialogue that takes place between the material (biophysical, economy, technology) and the ideational (culture, worldview, values, etc.), resulting in the continuous and mutual re-shaping of both. Worster (2003) has emphasized the cultural element of the human-environment equation, arguing, for example, that it was not a process of humans learning to adapt to the environment, but rather the “economic culture” of entrepreneurialism and opportunism that drove landowners to plow up millions of acres of grasslands in the 1910s and 1920s to sew in wheat. Cronon (1983) shows the mutual determination of environment and culture, and the different ways that humans live within and belong to ecosystems. Noorgaard (1994) frames societies and environments as co-evolving systems in which the co-evolutionary process involves changing relations between components of those systems (e.g., values, organization, technology, knowledge, environment), and in which the systems themselves are in a constant process of change.

Scholars who have studied various aspects of the Flint Hills and the surrounding area have of course brought varying perspectives. For example, Malin (1942) and Wibking (1963) draw on the notion of human adaptation to their biophysical environment. For Malin (1984) the human-environment dialogue was one in which newcomers to an ecosystem (e.g., settlers) went through an early exploitative stage in which they “experimented” with the environment, cause initial ecological disturbance, but then move into a less destructive stage as their knowledge, tools, practices“improved” with experience. Their engagement in the economy would guide progress toward geographic adaptation. Kollmorgen (1969) argued that a variety of geographic misconceptions on the part of “American woodsmen” of the frontier era led them to attempt to impose a small plot grain cropping system on western grasslands – as opposed to extensive ranching – leading to destruction of forage.

Wibking’s (1963)geography of the cattle industry in the Flint Hills is manifestly a story of an industry adapting to optimize its relationship with the environment. Similarly, Wood (1980), writing from the perspective of the beef industry, describes the history of cattle in this region as a linear, uninterrupted march of progress, in which shrewd, pioneering risk-takers invest in pure-bred cattle, make their fortunes and bring the environment under their financial domain. The two narratives above are accounts of rational humans using reason to “adapt” to their environments while overcoming any biophysical barriers or environmental damage. Worster (2003), on the other hand, saw agricultural capitalism and the culture of entrepreneurialism as the force driving environmental maladaption in the Great Plains.

In this chapter, we approach the human-environment relationship as an ecological dialogue, which includes both biophysical and social elements in constant interaction with each other. They mutually shape each other, in a sense co-evolving, though as Worster (2003) suggests, co-evolution is not a natural, apolitical process; rather it is driven by human interests as much as biophysical factors. Two of the salient themes in this narrative are legacy and resilience. The role of legacy in this case study involves transition which incorporates contradictory elements. Big Bluestem and other tallgrasses and native grasses are the central legacy of the Flint Hills uplands. They are central not only to the prairie ecosystem of the region, but also to the agrarian and other human systems that have developed there. The grasses were the main source of food for native ungulates (primarily Bos bison), which in turn were the center of the hunting and gathering societies of Indian tribes that lived in the region. Similarly, the tallgrass prairie proved to be a fertile ecological base for the ranching systems established by the Euro-American settlers who displaced the Indians.

The social legacies of the agrarian and other human systems established in the Flint Hills have had complex relationships with the region’s tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Of particular concern is the extent to which human practices have sustained or threatened the viability of the region’s ecosystem. From this perspective, most human systems established in the Flint Hills have had contradictory relationships with its tallgrass ecosystem. For example, although the livelihood of Indian tribes in the region depended on sustaining the bison, Sherow (1992) contends High Plains Indians had severely depleted the bison herds prior to the massive hunts by Euro-Americans, thus playing a role in the extirpation of bison. On the other hand, Euro-American ranchers, who have adopted sustainable practices such as spring burnings that benefit the tallgrass ecosystem, have also adopted agricultural practices such as double stocking that, if not done prudently, could threaten the viability of the ecosystem.

Humans’ contradictory relationships with the tallgrass ecosystem developed in the context of the region’s incorporation into the world system. The introduction of horses into the High Plains by European colonists had helped make American Indians more efficient hunters. More importantly, American Indians were hunting beyond their subsistence needs as they had become increasingly dependent on trade of bison products to Euro-Americans (Sherow 1992). Similarly, the beef cattle industry developed by Euro-Americans was dependent on urban markets in Chicago and elsewhere (Cronon 1992). Because their income was largely dependent on the number of cattle they could bring to the market, ranchers adopted double stocking and other practices designed to maximize the number of cattle produced from the tallgrass ecosystem. Research on the long-term ecological impact of over-grazing suggests, however, that this practice reduces biological diversity in the tallgrass ecosystem (Hoch 2000).

More recently, there has been a trend of urban citizens moving into exurban and rural areas for a more “natural” living experience (Hoch 2000). This urban-rural migration, however, ends up fragmenting prairie by suppressing the application of fire, and eventually leads to a transformation of the landscape from one defined by grass species to one dominated by woody species (Briggs, Hoch and Johnson 2002). Building a home in the rural Flint Hills may be aesthetically appealing to some, but it appears that these new residents, who may be unfamiliar with the cultural and biophysical legacies of the region, are contributing to prairie fragmentation. A common theme throughout this chapter is the idea of legacy as an enduring quality to maintain the features of the tallgrass prairie. Conflict arises when this legacy is challenged by elements which stand in contradiction to the goals of landscape conservation.

Another theme that emerges in this case study is the resiliency of the tallgrass prairie. At various points in the past 150 years, this social ecosystem has exhibited remarkable resilience in episodes of both drought and over-grazing. Moreover, at times when portions of the tallgrass prairie had been assumed dead, it proved also to have recuperative abilities when precipitation levels increased, and/or when grazing pressure was reduced.This resilience of the bluestem pastures, as part of a social ecosystem, also has implications for stability in some social patterns. This chapter provides an historical narrative aimed at highlighting the key transitions in the past 150 years. We begin with a discussion of the characteristics of the study area. To an extent, the following description emphasizes the biophysical characteristics of this landscape, though we recognize that it is also a social landscape, which has long been co-evolving with human systems.

Description of the Region

Study Area

We have defined a local study area which comprises those counties in Kansas that geologists and others have identified as exhibiting characteristics of the Flint Hills. While the Flint Hills unsurprisingly do not conform to county lines, the region is roughly two counties wide, running north-south from near the Kansas-Nebraska border in the north to the Kansas-Oklahoma border in the south.[1] The reason for focusing on these core counties is because the Flint Hills contains the largest remaining contiguous tract of unplowed tallgrass prairie (Knapp and Seastedt 1998) – the ecosystem of primary interest in this case study. Nested within the study area in southern RileyCounty, is Konza Prairie, a 3,487 hectare native tallgrass prairie preserve owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University (KSU). It is operated as a field research station by the KSU Division of Biology, and is concerned with long-term ecological research, education, and prairie conservation. Some of the data and research used in this case study is drawn from the work of researchers in the Konza Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program. Figure one shows the eastern third of the state of Kansas, with our study area highlighted by the inclusion of its hydrological characteristics. The county names are also provided, and will be referenced throughout this chapter. Konza prairie is indicated by the star on the map, and the gray areas of varying size are towns and cities. In the northeast corner of the state is the Kansas City metro area, and in the south central part of the state near our study area is Wichita.

The Flint Hills encompass over 50,000 km2, covering a considerable portion of the eastern third of Kansas, from near the Kansas-Nebraska border on the northern edge to northeastern Oklahoma on the southern edge. The range of hills is about twenty miles wide, running from RileyCounty in the north to Cowley and Chautauqua counties in the south. The upland terrain is relatively steep-sloped and overlain by shallow, chert-bearing limestone soils unsuitable for cultivation. The Flint Hills generally have a local relief of 350 feet, with maximum local change in elevation of about 1500 feet. It is not uncommon to find relief of 500 feet running ten to fifteen miles (Schoewe 1949). The largest flow of water in the region is the Kansas River in the north. Other rivers and streams that drain the uplands are the Cottonwood, Verdigris, Elk, Big Caney, Neosho, Marais des Cygnes, and Big and Little Blue Rivers (Schoewe 1949). The larger of these river systems contain relatively flat and fertile bottomland that generally lacks the shallow limestone on the surface.

Topographically, the Flint Hills are in contrast to the adjacent physiographic regions (see Figure two). To the east are the Osage Cuestas, a region of gently rolling hills, with some escarpments as well as flatlands. The “highly dissected east-facing escarpment” of the Flint Hills uplands has been used by geographers as the delineation between the Flint Hills and the Osage Cuestas (Schoewe 1949: 286). To the northeast is the Glaciated Region, the only place in Kansas that the glaciers reached (the northeast corner of the state). As in other glaciated areas, when the glaciers retreated they left behind rocks, soil and also a fine silt called loess, the latter providing the basis for the formation of fertile soils in the region. To the west lie the Smoky Hills, another region of gently rolling hills, but increasingly dry towards the west. The eastern and central Smoky Hills are capped with sandstone and limestone respectively. The land cover in this region is primarily mixed grass prairie, transitioning to the short grass prairies in the high plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado (Kuchler 1974). Much of the mixed grass prairie in this region is grazed by cattle, though a significant amount has been plowed for row crop agriculture. Finally, to the southwest of the Flint Hills are the Wellington-McPherson and Arkansas River Lowlands. Much of this region is a flood plain originally created by the Arkansas River, which has its origins in the Rocky Mountains. The river has created flatlands, and deposited sand and other sediments in the region. When placed in juxtaposition with these adjacent physiographic regions of eastern and central Kansas, the Flint Hills stand out in the landscape for their stream-dissected hills, sharper reliefs and escarpments, and bench and slope topography.