This study was comducted in a natrul tallgrass prairie area in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Our objective was to evaluate the surface radiative temperatures of burned and unburned treatments of the grassland as a means of delineating the areas covered by each treatment. Burning is used to remove the senescent vegetation resulting from the previous year's growth. Surface temperatures were obtained in situ andby an airborne scanner. Burned and unburned grass canopies had distinctly different diurnal surface radiative temperatures. Measurements of surface energy balance components revealed a difference in partitioning of of the available energy between the two canopies, which resulted in the difference in their measured surface temperatures. The magnitude of this difference is dependent of the time of measurements and topographic conditions