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Daniel Boone
National Forest
1700 Bypass Road
Winchester, KY 40391
Phone: 859-745-3100
FAX: 859-744-1568
Background
Throughout the southern Appalachian region and beyond, the documented failure of oak forests to regenerate themselves has been attributed, at least in part, to the lack of fire in the last half century. Managers responsible for maintaining the diversity of southern Appalachian forests are increasingly turning to prescribed fire as the management tool of choice in oak dominated forests. The decision to use fire with increasing frequency and spatial extent is based, in part, on an emerging sense of the prehistoric significance of fire in this landscape, and its potential to control the proliferation of fire-sensitive competitors of oak in contemporary forests. While it is well documented that fire has been an important ecological force in southern Appalachian forests for a very long time, data showing that prescribed fire effectively promotes oak regeneration is mixed.
Specific fire management objectives in the Daniel Boone National Forest (and throughout the broader Appalachian hardwood region) have been to reduce the understory and midstory proliferation of white pine, red maple, and other shade-tolerant species in forest stands dominated by oak in the overstory to try to promote oak regeneration. Managers on the DBNF have been collaborating with researchers at the University of Kentucky since 1995 to develop an understanding of the effects of management burning on the ecology of these sites. This collaboration has been very successful, both in producing peer-reviewed scientific research on the ecological effects of fire and in informing managers of the outcomes of prescribed fire management.
Long-term studies of this kind are rare, and therefore valuable for understanding the ecological responses to fire, which are expected to unfold over decades.
Last Updated:
January 31, 2012
