A 400-year history of fire and oak recruitment in an old-growth oak forest in western Maryland, U.S.A.

The autotrophic contribution to soil respiration in a northern temperate deciduous forest and its response to stand disturbance

“…Pests, pathogens, and fungal diseases, including the European gypsy moth (Lovett et al 2006), bacterial leaf scorch (Barnard 2007), and oak wilt (Wilson 2001), pose a direct threat to oak species and have already decimated a number of established oak populations. High deer populations (Rooney and Waller 2003), fire suppression (Shumway et al 2001), and shade intolerance (Crow 1992) are all factors in the current, widespread failure of oak tree regeneration. The combined effect of threats to mature oaks and failure of regeneration creates a significant probability that this foundation taxon (sensu Dayton 1972) will decline, with the potential for large impacts on forest carbon cycling.…”

Prescribed burning and understory composition in a temperate deciduous forest, Ohio, USA

“…Today, fire rarely occurs in deciduous forests of the CHR (Yaussy and Sutherland, 1994;Lafon et al, 2005), but fire scar records show that some oak-dominated stands burned regularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Sutherland, 1997;Shumway et al, 2001;Guyette and Spetich, 2003;Soucy et al, 2005;McEwan, 2006). Mean return times were as little as 5.4 years in some sites.…”

Long-term changes in forest structure and species composition of an upland oak forest in Arkansas

“…The financial and institutional challenges of establishing and maintaining long-term plots or records are considerable. Therefore, more common approaches to describing forest stand dynamics include computer modeling (Dixon, 2002), tree-ring and fire-scar analysis (Oliver, 1978;www.elsevier.com/locate/foreco Forest Ecology and Management 236 (2006) [85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92] Grissino-Mayer, 2001), and old-growth studies (Spetich and Parker, 1998;Shumway et al, 2001). These reconstructive and predictive techniques are useful, but lack the continuity of longterm measurements.…”