The very foundation of fire ecology is based on the premise that wildland fire is neither innately destructive nor in the best interest of every forest. Fire in a forest has existed since the evolutionary beginning of forests. Fire causes change and change will have its own value with direct consequences that can be both bad or good. It is a certainty that some fire dependent forest biomes benefit more from wildland fire than others.
So, change by fire is biologically necessary to maintain many healthy echosystems in fire-loving plant communities and resource managers have learned to use fire to cause changes in plant and animal communities to meet their objectives. Varying fire timing, frequency, and intensity produce differing resource responses that create the correct changes for habitat manipulation.
A HISTORY OF FIRE
Native Americans used fire in virgin pine stands to provide better access, improve hunting, and ridding the land of undesirable plants so they could farm. Early North American settlers observed this and continued the practice of using fire as a benificial agent.
Early 20th Century environmental awareness introduced the notion that the Nation's forests not only were a valuable resource but also a place of personal revitalization - a place to visit and live. Forests were again satisfying a human desire long pent-up to return to the forest in peace and in the beginning so wildfire was not a desirable component and prevented.
An encroaching modern wildland urban interface developed on the edges of North American wildlands and millions of acres of new tree's being planted to replace harvested timber called attention to the wildfire problem and led foresters to advocate the exclusion of all fire from the woods. This, in part, was due to the wood boom after WWII and the planting of millions of acres of susceptible trees that were vulnerable to fire in the first few years of establishment.
But all that changed. The "no burn" practices of a few park and forestry agencies and some forest owners proved to be, in itself, destructive. Prescribed fire and understory fuel pile burning are now deemed necessary tools in controlling the damaging unbridled wildfire.
Foresters found that destructive wildfires were prevented by burning under safer conditions with the necessary tools for control. A "controlled" burn that you understood and manage would reduce fuels that could feed potentially dangerous fires. Prescribed fire assured that the next fire season would not bring destructive, property-damaging fire.
So, This "exclusion of fire" has not always been an acceptable option. This was dramatically learned in Yellowstone National Park after decades of excluding fire resulted in catastrophic property loss. As our fire knowledge has accumulated, the use of "prescribed" fire has grown and foresters now include fire as an appropriate tool in managing the forest for many reasons.
USING PRESCRIBED FIRE
"Prescribed" burning as a practice is well explained in a well illustrated written report entitled A Guide for prescribed fire in Southern Forests. It is a guide to using fire applied in a knowledgeable manner to forest fuels on a specific land area under selected weather conditions to accomplish predetermined, well-defined management objectives.
Although written for Southern forests, the concepts are universal to all of North America's fire driven ecosystems.
Few alternative treatments can compete with fire from the standpoint of effectiveness and cost. Chemicals are expensive and have associated environmental risks. Mechanical treatments have the same problems. Prescribed fire is much more affordable with much less risk to the habitat and destruction of site and soil quality - when done properly.
Prescribed fire is a complex tool. Only a state certified fire prescriptionist should be allowed to burn larger tracts of forest. Proper diagnosis and detailed written planning should be mandatory before every burn. Experts with hours of experience will have the right tools, have an understanding of fire weather, have communications with fire protection units and know when conditions are not just right.
An incomplete assessment of any factor in a plan can lead to serious loss of property and life with serious liability questions to both the landowner and the one responsible for the burn.
The Balanced Nature caches on this Marsh Trail of the CREW are themed to just remind everyone of what we all take for granted. Nature must be balanced for the Earth to survive and the continuance of life here as we commonly know. As we stroll through the CREW on the Marsh Trail, take some time and look at what the Earth and nature has to offer us. Find the geocaches and look around to see if you can find the main theme to this cache. You may see it here, or you may see it elsewhere on the trails. Nature is all around, but…….. sometimes it hides. Just like geocaches. Have fun, look around for the theme of this cache and enjoy the day.
CREW (Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed) is a 60,000 acre watershed. A watershed is an area of land that absorbs rain and ground water and then drains it into a wetland. The CREW marsh is a 5000 acre wetland which holds onto the water it receives allowing the water to slowly sink into the ground. The marsh protects downstream areas from flooding during the rainy season and stores water for use during a drought. The plants in the marsh, dominated by sawgrass, filter the water, removing pesticides and other substances harmful to humans. After it is cleaned, the water through the force of gravity sinks into the ground through the spaces in the soil and bedrock ( rock that underlies the soil) recharging the underground aquifer. An aquifer is a permeable layer of bedrock that stores and conducts the water. The bedrock in the CREW marsh is composed of limestone which makes a good aquifer. This aquifer is the main source of drinking water for this part of Florida. Most of the 55 inches of annual rainfall the marsh receives comes in the summer and fall.