Question: What was the role of fire in montane pineoak (Pinus-Quercus) stands under changing human land uses on a temperate forest landscape in eastern North America? Location: Mill Mountain in the central Appalachian Mountains, Virginia, US. Methods: A dendroecological reconstruction of fire history was generated for four stands dominated by xerophytic pine and oak species. The fire chronology began under presettlement conditions following aboriginal depopulation. Subsequent land uses included European settlement, iron mining, logging, and US Forest Service acquisition and fire protection.

This paper uses records of wildland fire to investigate the contemporary fire regime on federal lands in the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia. During the study period , 1557 anthropogenic fires and 344 natural fires occurred on these lands. Most were small, low-intensity burns. However, fires of moderate to high intensity also occurred, and because of their larger sizes they were responsible for most of the area burned. Fire size also differed between natural and anthropogenic fires (median size 1.2 ha vs. 0.4 ha). A few of the anthropogenic fires were quite large, however (up to 6484 ha), whereas the largest natural fire measured only 1188 ha. Anthropogenic fires burned more area than natural fires and consequently they had a shorter fire cycle (1196 years for anthropogenic fires, 6138 years for natural fires). These fire cycles appear to be much longer than in the past, prior to fire suppression. Nonetheless, despite suppression efforts, a substantial amount of fire activity occurred during the study period when conditions were sufficiently dry. The dry conditions of spring and fall were especially favorable for burning. Moreover, on an interannual level, drought had a strong influence on the amount of fire activity. [

No abstract

Fire-maintained ecosystems and associated species are becoming increasingly rare in the southern Appalachian Mountains because of fire suppression policies implemented in the early 20th century. Restoration of these communities through prescribed fire has been hindered by a lack of information on historical fire regimes. To characterize past fire regimes, we collected and absolutely dated the tree rings on cross sections from 242 fire-scarred trees at three different sites in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. Our objectives were to (1) characterize the historical frequency of fire in southern Appalachian mixed pine-oak forests, (2) assess the impact of interannual climatic variability on the historical occurrence of fire, and (3) determine whether changes in human culture and land use altered the frequency of fire. Results demonstrate that fires burned frequently at all three sites for at least two centuries prior to the implementation of fire suppression and prevention in the early to mid 20th century. Composite mean fire return intervals were 2-4 yr, and point mean fire return intervals were 9-13 yr. Area-wide fires that burned across multiple stands occurred at 6-13-yr intervals. The majority of fires were recorded during the dormant season. Fire occurrence exhibited little relationship with reconstructed annual drought conditions. Also, fire activity did not change markedly during the transition from Native American to Euro-American settlement or during the period of industrial logging at the start of the 20th century. Fire activity declined significantly, however, during the fire suppression period, with a nearly complete absence of fire during recent decades. The characterization of past fire regimes should provide managers with specific targets for restoration of fire-associated communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The fire chronologies reported here are among the longest tree-ring reconstructions of fire history compiled for the eastern United States and support the hypothesis that frequent burning has played a long and important role in the development of forests in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

We investigated spatial variations in the incidence of anthropogenic and natural (lightning-ignited) fire in the central Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia using a record of wildland fires that occurred on federal lands between 1970 and 2003. A consideration of spatial variability in wildland fire is important for allocating firesuppression resources and for informing resource managers who use naturally ignited wildland fires or prescribed fires in ecological restoration efforts and fuel reduction treatments. The central Appalachian region contains three physiographic provinces with distinct climate, terrain, and vegetation characteristics. Comparing ignition density, maximum fire size, and fire cycle among the three provinces indicated that the Appalachian Plateau-the westernmost province and also the highest, coolest, and wettest of the three-was the least fire-prone environment. The Blue Ridge province along the eastern edge of the region was most fire prone. The Ridge and Valley province, which occupies the center of the region, generally was intermediate in fire characteristics, despite having the driest climate and the greatest extent of flammable pine (Pinus L.)-and oak (Quercus L.)-dominated forests. At a finer spatial scale, fire activity varied topographically in all three provinces: ignition density declined with increasing elevation, but showed weaker, less consistent relationships to aspect. Spatial variations in the importance of natural fires may be of particular interest to federal resource managers who are developing plans for permitting natural fires to burn to restore fire-associated ecosystems. The Blue Ridge appears to be a particularly favorable environment for natural ignitions. [