Treesearch

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) is a national nonprofit organization promoting safe, ethical, ecological wildland fire management. FUSEE members include current, former, and retired wildland firefighters; fire managers, scientists, and educators; forest conservationists; and other interested citizens who support FUSEE’s holistic fire management vision.

Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) is capable of sprouting after the stem is killed. The sprouting ability of shortleaf pine could be used to favor the species silviculturally for specific management objectives. Information is limited on burning effects at different periods of the growing season on shortleaf pine survival and growth. This study was located on the Cumberland Plateau region of east Tennessee and was conducted on one-year-old seedlings. Replicated treatments analyzed as a randomized block design included: clipping in March, burning in April, burning in July, burning in...

Throughout much of the Central Hardwoods region, the use of prescribed fire on public lands has increased rapidly in the last decade to improve oak regeneration. While prescribed fire can favor oak regeneration, its use may also increase risk of invasion and expansion of nonnative invasive species (NNIS). Although fire has often been shown to facilitate the expansion of NNIS in the Western United States, much less in known about the effects of fire on invasives in the Eastern United States. In 2008, a team of Ohio scientists and land managers initiated a Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP)...

Southern Appalachian montane wetlands are rare natural communities. Distributed throughout the Appalachians’ high-elevation depressions, valley slopes, and basins, a highly variable combination of abiotic factors shape the character of each “bog.” Most unaltered bogs are distinguished by a generally open vegetative structure and diverse herbaceous flora, but with a tendency toward succession to forests. Natural disturbances arrest some bogs in early seres. However, anthropogenic influence has increasingly precluded many such disturbance regimes, resulting in uninhibited succession, habitat...

Many researchers and resource managers advocate an increase in fire use to restore fire regimes similar to thoseunder which the vegetation of the Appalachian Mountains developed. Restoring fire implies a need to establish historicalreference conditions. We have developed dendroecological reconstructions of fire history and forest dynamics for a networkof sites in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Estimates of fire frequency for these sitesindicate that fire typically returned at intervals of 2-19 years. Burning occurred at a relatively steady level under...

Charcoal particles in soils and sediments of the Appalachian region provide evidence of long-term fire history relevant to resource management and to studies of paleoclimate, vegetation history, and the effects of prehistoric and historic humans on the environment. Charcoal records of fire history are of low resolution in comparison to dendrochronological records, but reach well beyond the oldest trees in most areas, providing evidence of fires thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. We focus here on fire history reconstruction from soil charcoal, which provides sitespecific evidence...

Fire is increasingly applied as a land management tool toward achieving multiple objectives in eastern North American oak (Quercus) communities. Prescribed fire treatments are applied for natural community restoration, hazardous fuel reduction, and multiple silvicultural objectives (Arthur and others 2012, Brose and others 2013, Brose and Van Lear 1998, Burton and others 2011, Dey and Hartman 2005, Pyne and others 1996). In southern Missouri, prescribed fire is used to restore glades, savannas, and woodlands by decreasing the number of woody stems, consuming litter, and creating forest...

In April 2012, the understory of the Rich Hole Wilderness Area in Virginia including the watershed of North Branch of Simpson Creek (NBSC) was burned in a major wildfire. This fire presented a unique opportunity for the study of effects of forest fires on streams in the Appalachian Mountains. In other locations wildfires have produced changes in soil composition, surface runoff, and water chemistry. As the most dramatic effects of wildfires on streams have been the result of episodic discharge, sampling was conducted May–September 2012 for precipitation runoff events. In addition, synoptic...

LANDFIRE is approaching its’ 10th birthday, and moving forward. A partnership between the U.S. Department of the Interior; the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; and The Nature Conservancy, LANDFIRE delivered national spatial data sets representing conditions in 2000, 2008, and 2010, and the first comprehensive descriptions of all major ecosystems in the United States. The impetus of the LANDFIRE Program (formerly the LANDFIRE Project) was to provide foundational information that could support regional and national fire and natural resource management planning programs, such...

The regeneration potential of oak following a disturbance or harvest that initiates stand regeneration is determined largely by the size structure of oak before the event. Collectively, regeneration from (1) seed, (2) advance reproduction, and (3) stump sprouts contribute to oak regeneration but vary in their competitive capacity Oak regeneration potential is modified by site, competitor regeneration potential and management input Prescribed fire is increasingly being used to promote oak regeneration with mixed results. Oak has many silvical traits that make it well adapted to fire. Fire...