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Fire History and Tree Recruitment in an Uncut New England Forest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Daniel H. Mann ,
F.Brett Engstrom  and
Jill L. Bubier
Daniel H. Mann
Affiliation:
P.O. Box 81826, Fairbanks, Alaska 99708
F.Brett Engstrom
Affiliation:
RRI Box 324, Marshfield, Vermont 05658
Jill L. Bubier
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, McGill University, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2K6
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Abstract

Fire and forest histories in a hemlock-pine forest in Vermont have been reconstructed by dating fire scars and reconstructing the age distributions of living and dead trees. The ages of living red pines, white pines, and hemlocks show that most of the present forest germinated after a series of spatially overlapping fires between A.D. 1790 and 1850. The ages of cross-dated, dead red pines indicate that this was the third major recruitment interval for pines in this forest since ca. A.D. 1450. We interpret the fire scar and tree age data as recording ca. 50-yr intervals of increased fire frequency recurring every 100-200 yr in response to accumulating fuel loads that coincide with summer drought. The historical records of fires and tree ages, together with the present fuel load, suggest that the next interval of stand-regenerating fires is now overdue. Our success in cross-dating the remnants of dead red pines as old as the 15th century A.D. holds promise for extending reconstructions of fire, forest, and climate history in other parts of this tree's range.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , September 1994 , pp. 206 - 215
Copyright
University of Washington

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