Fires, regeneration and ecological impacts

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Originally Posted by montcalm (Post 288152) Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong here, but just another historical bit of evidence I recall is that Verplanck Colvin burned many summits in the west/central Adirondacks for survey. Most of those summits remain bare today. From this I'd conclude they were absent of fire for more than a couple centuries, maybe millennia, prior to him razing them to have been entirely forested. When I look at the eastern part of the Adirondacks, where we know there have been a number of natural fires in the past century, we see them taking out small mountain tops, and we also see repopulation with red pine and oak, or paper birch. If natives were burning the western parts of the park, that aren't as prone to natural fire, it was a very small scale. Just some food for thought...

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Originally Posted by DSettahr (Post 288243) This is mainly speculation: I would assume that Colvin's fires were quite probably of a higher heat/intensity than a natural fire typically would be. Since the goal was to create a summit working space with good visibility, I'd also assume that they cut down larger trees prior to starting the fire- so there'd be a lot more slash on the ground to feed the flames. A higher intensity fire would be much more disruptive to the soil ecosystem, which in turn would set things back a lot more in terms of overall successional dynamics.

It sure is speculation, and I didn't add the caveat that people have been walking on those past burned areas, further disturbing them from regeneration of soils through lichens and mosses.


But I think there is some truth to where I was going, and that is what we see in fire scars on mountains in the east. They don't strip the mountains completely, and we do see regeneration of red pine, birch and I would guess small red oaks.

The speculation of fires never seems to end, but it started with the thought of natives burning the forest, which I believe is documented for agriculture, but has really no evidence for managing the forest - although it'd be a good idea, and it seems to get taught a lot.

What would be interesting would be to look at the fires of the 20th century and see how the regeneration has taken place. I'd assume there must be some records from fire observers, and I was thinking of actually trying to find some data.

Anecdotally, I've also noticed quite a unique ecosystem on small, forested mountains in the west. They aren't quite like the rest of the forest often. We see all sorts of stuff actually, from blueberry bushes and scrubby spruce to what I found most interesting, and that is what I'd call glades. I can see the evidence of these kind of things on burned mountains in the east - mainly big tufts of grasses that often retain soils even after fires. But I've also noticed that the tree cover is much thinner and there's more ferns. I've also seen some pretty large white pines perched up on cliffs, so maybe there is no rhyme or reason.

Maybe those glades are evidence of fires? Maybe it's just an environmental response to increased exposure.


I didn't want to drift the hunting thread too far talking about fire, so I started this thread.