As temperatures drop, dew points spike in the evenings, and winds head offshore, you may start to see large plumes of smoke on the horizon throughout the Lowcountry. Nothing to be concerned about — it’s the doctor’s order!
People may be familiar with the term “control burns” used in land management, but that’s a misnomer since there is no controlling a raging fire. “Prescribed burns” is the proper term used by land managers across the southeast – a prescription for the forest. Burning the forest floor every couple of years keeps our fire-dependent ecosystems happy and healthy. Why are fires so integral to our ecosystems, and why are fires good for animals, plants, and humans alike? Let’s fire up some answers! 🔥
A little background to start. If you live in the Southeast United States, you are living on top of an altered landscape once dominated by nearly 90 million acres of longleaf pine savanna that stretched nearly 140,000 square miles from Virginia to East Texas. This ecosystem, among the most biodiverse in North America, now covers only about 7 million acres scattered across the Southeast. Fires naturally occurred in this grassland through lightning strikes, and even Native American cultures used fire to clear landscapes and forage for crisped remnants of wildlife.
What is a longleaf pine savanna? As the name “savanna” implies, it is a vast grassland dominated by a sparse canopy of longleaf pine trees. Longleaf pines are fire-adapted species with extensive sap reserves that protect the trees from heat and flames. Even their seeds rely on the forest floor conditions created by fire to germinate.
The open grassland under the sparse canopy supports a huge diversity of plants from ground orchids and bunch grasses to pitcher plants and milkweeds. These fire-tolerant species burrow roots deep in the ground, protected by the soil, and the addition of nutrients into the soil created by fire sparks massive above-ground growth spurts after the fires subsided.
Some of the Southeast’s most endangered species rely on these fire-maintained habitats. Gopher tortoises evolved in the landscape and became a keystone species. Their intricate deep burrows provide refuge from the flames not only for themselves but also for many other species, such as eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, gopher frogs, and others. Red-cockaded woodpeckers nest in cavities of longleaf pines created by rotting wood high in the tree, out of reach from flames burning on the forest floor. They then drill holes in the trunk of the tree, triggering it to secrete copious amounts of sap that creates a sticky barrier to protect fledglings from predators that might try to climb the tree.
Prescribed burns might be among the most efficient and cost-effective ways to manage large tracts of land. Managed fires that burn at a low temperature are effective tools for managing the ecology of woodland habitats, eliminating unwanted woody vegetation and invasive species while keeping the forest floor clear for new emergent growth. They also keep homeowners living in woodlands safer by reducing the forest’s fuel load, which would cause fires to burn hotter and potentially get out of control — literally fighting fire with fire!
So next time you’re driving across a bridge in the Lowcountry and see a column of light colored smoke rising from the treeline, send a thanks for good land management. Someone is preventing wildfires and improving habitat quality for a host of species.