An Unusual Oak Savanna in Northeastern Wisconsin: The Effect of Indian-Caused Fire

The Demise of Fire and “Mesophication” of Forests in the Eastern United States

“…The resulting variation was richly displayed on the presettlement landscape, wherein annually burned prairies were bounded by a continuum of savannas, open woodlands, and closed-canopy forests with increasing distance (Nuzzo 1986, Anderson 1998, although abrupt prairie-forest transitions did exist along natural firebreaks (e.g., rivers). Similar structural and compositional gradients, from fire-dependent oak savanna to fire-intolerant mesophytic forests, often ringed Native villages or travel corridors from which broadcast burning emanated (Dorney and Dorney 1989). Even though presettlement trees tended to be large on average (quadratic mean diameter of 30 to 42 centimeters [cm]), stand basal areas were low to moderate, as a result of tree sparseness (9 to 22 square meters [m 2 ] per ha; Fralish et al 1991).…”

Fire history from soil charcoal in a mixed hardwood forest on the Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee, USA1

“…The patchy savanna structure is maintained by a cycle of disturbance and regeneration (Dorney and Dorney 1989;Arabas 2000;DeSantis et al 2010) associated with periodic understory fires (Tester 1989;Scholes and Archer 1997). The absence of fire results in canopy closure and shading out of fire adapted tree species' seedlings, grasses, and forbs (White et al 2011), causing a transition to closed forest (Abrams 1992;Peterson and Reich 2001).…”

Fire Effects on Soils in Lake States Forests: A Compilation of Published Research to Facilitate Long-Term Investigations

“…Fire was also used by native peoples in portions of the Lake States region prior to EuroAmerican settlement and it is sometimes difficult to separate the importance of this anthropogenic fire from natural fire as a driver of forest dynamics [12][13][14].…”