Out in the western US, there are lightning-caused fires all of the time. In southwestern Oregon this past year, we had nearly 200 lightning-ignited fires when storms would sweep through the area. The most recent ones were about a month ago. HOWEVER, I am currently doing some planning in an area where there is a very long history of human habitation that goes back several thousand years, and there is increasing evidence, in this fire-prone landscape (very hot and dry in the summer), that native people did a lot of burning. I am convinced in this case that it is not a matter of lightning-caused fires being extinguished, but a matter of the lack of intensive management by people that has resulted in the encroached oak savannahs and prairies in the area.
Some interesting work in this area is being done by Bob Zybach (Northwest Maps Company) and Ken Carloni of Umpqua Community College. Bob has even determined that many of the prairies were kept open by active tillage to plant food crops in addition to burning. The burning was done in cycles to promote different types of plants - the harvest of those plants tended to run in 2-4 year cycles, so once the last plants in the series were harvested, the burning was done again to restart the cycle. A lot of these plants were used for basketry and other uses - beargrass, hazel, giant chain fern... On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 5:05 PM, Gary Smith <[email protected]>wrote: > > ENTS and Foresters, > > How often do you see or know of forest fires that can definitely be > attributed to lightning strikes? > > Every season, once in a while, hardly ever? > > Being most interested in the history of the longleaf pine and how it > once dominated great parts of the lower South, I would especially hope > for the Southern lads here to chime in with their experiences. > > Without Indians setting fires, would longleaf still have come to > dominate? > > This question was inspired by Joe Z's question on another thread, but > I wanted to put it as a separate topic. > > Gary Smith > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
