Effects of prescribed fire and other plant community restoration treatments on tree mortality, bark beetles, and other saproxylic Coleoptera of longleaf pine, Pinus palustris Mill., on the Coastal Plain of Alabama

Structure and composition changes following restoration treatments of longleaf pine forests on the Gulf Coastal Plain of Alabama

“…In the burn but especially in the thin plus burn and herbicide plus burn treatments, there were hot spots where fuel accumulations resulted in higher intensity fires and flame lengths that caused pine mortality. In another study, a complete survey, rather than a sample of the units, showed greater mortality rates on the thin plus burn plots compared to thin, burn or control units (Campbell et al, 2008). They also found that fire was the leading cause of pine mortality, killing the vast majority of trees that died during the 4 years.…”

Effects of overstory composition and prescribed fire on fuel loading across a heterogeneous managed landscape in the southeastern USA

“…The least reliable predictions are for the hardwood group, but this vegetation group rarely experiences wildfires because it occurs in riparian and wetland areas in the Atlantic coastal plain. The generally weak predictions associated with small twigs and branches likely results from the opposing forces controlling the dynamics of recruitment, such as tree mortality and breakage from storms (ice, wind, fire), pests and harvests (e.g., Aubrey et al, 2007;Campbell et al, 2008), and decay (Van Lear, 1996; Eaton and Sanchez, 2009). These materials are created by irregular canopy branch and stem breakage and they will decompose more quickly because of their small size.…”

“…The 1-, 10-and 100-h fuels are more complex to interpret because the coefficients for years since last burn and number of burns are both positive and negative. The inconsistent results may be a consequence of processes discussed in Section 5.2., but may be partially attributed to whether the direct effect of fire on consumption in general balance the indirect effect of fire on mortality (Sullivan et al, 2003;Campbell et al, 2008). One-time survey data may be too infrequent to gain insights into the relationship between recent fire history and these FL components.…”

Eight years of seasonal burning and herbicidal brush control influence sapling longleaf pine growth, understory vegetation, and the outcome of an ensuing wildfire

“…In addition, fire may weaken longleaf pine trees, making them susceptible to attacks by insects and pathogens (Hanula et al, 2002;Sullivan et al, 2003), although increased beetle activity does not guarantee that trees will be killed by beetles (Campbell et al, 2008).…”