Fire Research
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In 1986, the Cape Cod National Seashore, in cooperation with the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, initiated applied research on the effectiveness of varying the season and frequency of treatments (prescribed burning or bush cutting) on forest composition, fuel loading and fire behavior. Sixty 0.1 - acre plots were established to create the Lombard-Paradise Hollow Fire Management Research Area within the seashore boundries. 
Fire Crew Members put fire on the ground during a summer prescribed burn at Lombard-Paradise Hollow Fire Management Research Area in South Truro. This plot has been burned annually since 1986. Preliminary results of the research indicate that burning during the spring and summer reduces fuel loads. Burning at a 3 to 4 year intervals is the most cost efficient way to reduce fuel loading. Oak saplings resprout vigorously after spring burns. Both mowing and burning during the dormant season encourage huckleberry and blueberry vegetation to grow, but hot fires are required to open up the canopy and allow light to reach the forest floor and encourage berry production. Summer burns conducted during drought conditions consume duff layers, kill most shrubs and favor pine seedling establishment. Annual summer brush-cutting eliminates shrubs and reduces the amount of litter and dead wood that fuel wildfires. Combinations of mowing followed by burning, when applied in the summer, are effective methods of quickly reducing fuel loads and fire hazard. 
Metal poles are placed within a unit during a prescribed burn to determine rate of spread, flame length and flame height. The Fire Management Program has also worked in conjunction with park scientists to better understand the effects of fire on Phragmites australis, an invasive plant, in Hatches Harbor in Provincetown. Recently, researchers from the University of Central Florida - Dr. Von Holle Restoration Ecology Lab, began working with the Fire Management Program to reseach the role fire has in the regeneration of Broom Crowberry (Corema conradii). |
Did You Know?
There are twenty permanently flooded freshwater kettle ponds within the Cape Cod National Seashore. They range in size from 2.5 to 100 acres and from 6 to 65 feet in depth.