Researching the Effects of Wildland Fire

Collecting data on aspens a decade after a prescribed fire in Wyoming.

NPS

This article is part of the Wildland Fire Learning In Depth series. It is designed for students who want to learn more about fire. Find the complete series on the Fire subject site.

Fire Effects Monitoring Program

Research and monitoring on the effects of fire has been occurring for decades in the national parks. It is an important basis of decision making for park and fire managers.

Why does the National Park Service monitor?

Fire is a powerful and lasting force that has greatly affected National Park Service (NPS) lands for generations and will continue to do so in the future. It's important for NPS to manage and restore this natural process in many parks, as fire is as much a part of the ecosystem as the plants and animals that reside there. Therefore, understanding how prescribed fire affects park resources is essential for making sound management decisions based on science.

Using data from a reliable monitoring program helps park managers evaluate how well management actions such as prescribed fire are meeting expectations. This crucial information informs adaption and management changes over time. By looking at monitoring results, managers can see if they are meeting their goals and allows them to make necessary adjustments if something isn't working as expected.

The fire monitoring program helps the NPS to track important information, spot trends, and ensure that parks achieve their fire and resource management goals. By recognizing trends, park staff can raise specific concerns, create hypotheses about what may be occurring and why, and identify research projects to find solutions to any issues.

A crewmember identifies a whitebark pine during a wildfire.

NPS

Goals of the Program

• Document basic information for all wildland fires, regardless of management strategy;

• Document fire behavior to allow managers to take appropriate action on all fires that have the potential to threaten human safety or resource values;

• Document and analyze both short-term and long-term prescribed fire effects on fuels and vegetation;

• Establish a recommended standard for data collection and analysis techniques to share monitoring data with neighboring agencies/partners;

• Follow trends in plant communities where fire effects are generally known, or research has been conducted;

• Identify areas where additional research is needed.

Monitoring the effects of fire on park ecosystems is an important part of the NPS Wildland Fire Management Program. Fire managers need to accurately predict fire behavior under varying weather conditions and predict how fire will affect fuel loads, plant populations, and tree regeneration. Fire effects crews monitor prescribed fires and fuels project areas to ensure that management objectives are met and that there are no unexpected effects. The crews also study lightning-caused wildland fires to better understand the role of these fires and inform visitor safety and resource protection.

Standard Data Collected:

• Shrub and herbaceous vegetation composition and abundance;

• Tree density, diameter, and health by species and size class;

• Fuel load by size class (fine woody fuel and larger logs);

• Leaf litter and organic duff depth;

• Average scorch height (post-burn);

• Percent crown scorch (post-burn);

• Burn severity (post-burn);

• Visual changes at permanent photo points.

The Process

Crews sample fuels and vegetation prior to burning or mechanical fuels projects, immediately after, and at 1-, 2-, 5-, and 10-year intervals. After taking measurements, crewmembers enter the data into a database for analysis. The data and results allow resource managers and scientists to compare pre- and post-burn vegetation composition and fuel load to assess whether burn objectives were met, and to track long-term changes following wildland fire.

Monitoring a prescribed fire at Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia. Previous prescribed fire in the area encouraged the resident gopher tortoise population to expand their range.

NPS/M FORDER

Results

Learning the effects of fire on a landscape is a valuable tool for park and fire managers as well as scientists, who have studied the effects of fire in national parks since the early 1950s. Research continues in many parks, including Everglades National Park in Florida, Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, Yosemite National Park in California and national parks in Alaska where fire ecologists have learned valuable lessons.

• Scientists found that 33 native plant species in Everglades National Park depend on fire for long-term survival.

• Restoration research at Dinosaur National Monument showed that native grasslands increased by prescribed burning unnatural concentrations of sagebrush at critical growth stages.

• Research in Yosemite National Park showed that white fir trees act as ladders that fire can climb to the crowns of giant sequoia trees. Naturally occurring surface fires formerly killed many white fir trees. This natural process is now replicated by prescribed fires that can help protect the giant sequoia groves from impacts of severe wildfires.

• Fire ecologists in Alaska revisited an area in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve that had experienced two wildfires in rapid succession and found that the majority of those areas had lost near-surface permafrost in comparison with control plots.

It does not take long for some animals to enter a recently burned area to hunt for food.

NPS

• By burning intensely in some areas and less intensely in others, fire can create a puzzle-like mosaic of diverse habitats for plants and animals. Hawks and other birds of prey hunt along the edges of burned areas and find cover in unburned areas. Deer feed on nutritious, succulent new shoots of grasses and shrubs that appear after fire.

• Some plants cannot reproduce without fire. Cones of jack pine and lodgepole pine in forests of the northern United States are sealed with pitch. Fire must melt the pitch to release the seeds. Fire breaks open the outside coating of mountain lilac seeds and stimulates germination in southern California chaparral. Without fire, seeds can lie dormant in the soil for decades. Aspen, birch, and willow sprout from their roots after a fire.