Resource managers need reliable scientific information to effectively manage plant and animal communities and ecological processes. Ecologists must accept the challenge of providing sound scientific and relevant information to resource managers in a manner that allows prediction of the effects of land management techniques on ecosystems. Our research on the Kiowa National Grassland is designed to experimentally analyze the effects of season and frequency of fire on vegetation, small mammal, reptile, and arthropod communities in shortgrass prairie. The research should provide resource managers with information that will allow them to predict the effects of prescribed burns on semi-arid shortgrass prairie ecosystems.