Video
Science Behind the Scenery: Fire Management
Transcript
[vegetation burning]
[Jane Rodgers] Looking at fire history here at the seashore, we've tried to figure out what happened here historically.
[vegetation burning]
That's what I mean by fire history, is how often do fires occur typically in the past, how large were they, um, and how did they affect the plant communities that they were burning in.
[birds singing and insects buzzing]
Understanding fire history is a very complicated thing. You're looking at a landscape and you're trying to picture what normally would happen here in terms of fire.
[birds singing]
Plant communities and the landscape we're looking at today, it's not the same as what it was a couple hundred years ago. And you're given some clues. And a couple of clues you can look at are fire rings, which are literally the rings of a tree that have fire scars in them. And those can help you figure out when a fire occurred historically.
[birds singing]
Another thing that you can do is look at sediment cores. And those are actually cores taken of soil. And within that core, you're finding pieces of charcoal at various depths. And some of these cores you can actually date back up to 7,000 years.
[birds singing and insects buzzing]
Fire is a management tool in any conservation area. What we're doing here is looking at where fire naturally occurs in the system. So, one concept is: how do we reintroduce fire to systems that really need it as part of their community cycle. The other aspect that we're working on at the seashore is using fire as a tool to manage exotic plant species.
We've been excluding fire over the last say 50 to 100 years. There is a plant in that community that's actually becoming quite rare—it's the Marin manzanita. Manzanita seeds require heat in order to germinate. And, so, if you exclude fire from an area the seeds are not able to germinate. And by applying fire, you stimulate that species to actually regenerate.
[birds singing]
One of the projects here at the seashore is at a location called the Estero. There, we've been working on managing an exotic plant called Scotch broom.
[insect buzzing]
Fire, so far, seems like it could be a valuable tool in managing broom here at the seashore.
[Roger Wong] In establishing the perimeter of a prescribed burn unit, we can decide what boundaries the perimeter of the burn area is.
[birds singing and insects buzzing]
So, for instance, if we have a road or a stream bank, we try to find natural barriers. We can stop it without actually having to put it out, like a wildfire. But there will probably be areas where you do not have those natural barriers. In those situations, we have to construct our own barriers. And that may be either through a technique we call wet lining—and that involves putting a wet water line down around the perimeter of the fire—or by a technique we call black lining. And black lining is getting on the very perimeter edge of the unit and lighting 15 feet inside the perimeter of the burn unit. That secures the perimeter.
[vegetation burning]
In developing a prescription, we look at a range of air temperatures, wind speeds, relative humidities, cloud cover, vegetation moisture.
[vegetation burning]
Once we've established this range, we can narrow in on what specific parameters we want to use.
[vegetation burning]
[Jane Rodgers] Here at Point Reyes, our fire management program has three objectives. The first is to maintain native communities; the second is to manage exotic plants; and the third is to manage hazardous fuels.
00:04:16.900 --> 00:04:17.880 [vegetation burning]
We've been using fire here since the 1970s. And the question is: Are we effective? Are we actually accomplishing what we're trying to do? In terms of managing exotic plant species, we have reduced Scotch broom by about 84%, which has met our objectives that we set out initially.
[vegetation burning]
Fire effects monitoring in the Park Service is one great tool to look at monitoring sites over time to figure out if we're meeting our objectives. The plots are installed prior to burning an area and they're read in terms of what species occur there and what's their percent cover. The plots are read prior to the fire, immediately after the fire, and at years one, two, five, and ten following the fire. This data has been extremely valuable in quantifying whether or not we're actually reducing the exotic plant, Scotch broom, in the areas where we are applying fire.
[vegetation burning]
[Roger Wong] Many years ago, the role of land managers, in fire, was one of suppression, and putting fires out.
[vegetation burning]
It wasn't until we realized that fire played a very important role in the ecology of forests and wild lands.
[vegetation burning]
At that point, there was a shift in thinking. And what was once fire control turned into fire management.
[vegetation burning]
The term "fire management" includes using fire: to reduce fuel loading in the forests; to help stimulate native plants; and reduce noxious and invasive weeds.
[vegetation burning]
We have come almost full circle, from the days of putting fires out, to starting fires for the benefit of the ecology of our wild lands.
[vegetation burning]
Description
The ninth part of the ten-part Science Behind the Scenery documentary featuring vegetation ecologist Jane Rodgers and Fire Management Officer Roger Wong talking about the how fire is managed and used at Point Reyes National Seashore to restore habitat and control invasive species.
Duration
6 minutes, 12 seconds
Credit
Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center
Date Created
03/24/2004
Copyright and Usage Info
Tags
- point reyes national seashore
- point reyes
- pacific coast science and learning center
- pcslc
- science and learning center
- science and learning centers
- science behind the scenery
- science
- fire management
- fire
- fire ecology
- fire effects monitoring
- prescribed fire
- wildfire
- wildland fire
- invasive species
- scotch broom