58 NEBRASKAland • JUNE 2017
D
uring the last couple of years, I've been trying
to learn as much as I can about blowouts. I've
always been drawn to blowouts as a photographer
because they are great places to find tracks and
other interesting patterns in the sand, and because
insects, lizards and toads can't hide behind
vegetation when I'm trying to photograph them.
More recently, however, I've begun realizing
how little is actually known about the
ecology of blowouts.
We know quite a bit about how
blowouts form, and botanists have
documented the plant species that most
often grow in blowouts. Surprisingly,
though, there is very little known about
the communities of animals using
blowouts as habitat. Because of that,
I've been paying attention to plants,
but trying even harder to document
the insects, lizards, toads and other
creatures I find in blowouts, hoping
to better understand the value of these
areas of open sand that annoy ranchers
but seem to attract many Sandhills
animals.
Active blowouts are largely unvegetated, of
course, but plants are constantly working to
change that. The biggest challenge to plants
growing in and around blowouts is to somehow
anchor themselves in open, moving sand. Most
of the grasses and wildflowers in blowouts are
using an extensive web of rhizomes (underground
stems) to hold them in place. What appears, at
