The fire—oak literature of eastern North America: synthesis and guidelines

Abstract

Guidelines for using prescribed fire to regenerate and restore upland oak forests, woodlands, and savannas in eastern North America were developed by synthesizing the results of more than 100 scientific publications. The first four chapters provide background information on the values of oak ecosystems, eastern fire history, oak's adaptations to fire, and the findings of fire-oak research conducted over the past 50 years. The final chapter synthesizes that background information into guidelines that explain how to use prescribed fire to facilitate oak seedling establishment, release oak reproduction from competing mesophytic hardwoods, and rehabilitate open oak woodlands, oak savannas, and scrub oak communities. A reference section is also provided for readers desiring to delve more deeply into the associations between periodic fire and oak forests, woodlands, and savannas.

Impacts of Wildfire Recency and Frequency on an Appalachian Oak Forest

“…To develop management guidelines for using prescribed fire to establish successful oak regeneration, it may not be enough to simply "average out" a certain number of burns over a defined period of time. The most recent fire in the plots on the CSF where the greatest number of oak saplings were found was in 2001, 7 years before the data used for analysis were collected, supporting the findings of others of the need for a fire-free period to allow for oak sapling development and recruitment (Brose 2004, Johnson et al 2009, Dey et al 2010, Brose et al 2014). …”

Assessing patterns of oak regeneration and C storage in relation to restoration-focused management, historical land use, and potential trade-offs

“…Another potential reason that management was not strongly related to oak regeneration is that fire management can also have negative effects on oak regeneration -through repeated direct topkill -even as conditions become more amenable for these seedlings (Brose et al, 2014). This pattern is apparent in the lack of a relationship between fire frequency and oak seedling density and the corresponding slight positive relationship with relative density (Fig.…”

Potenziale und Risiken eingeführter Baumarten

“…deutlich besser angepasst als viele andere Baumarten (Dey 2002, Arthur et al 2012, Brose et al 2014. Ältere Bäume sind aufgrund der dünneren Borke zunächst stärker gefährdet als heimische Eichen, aber Knospen am Wurzelhals ermöglichen den Neuausschlag, was für jüngere Exemplare ohnehin gilt (Wezel 1950 (Brun 1987, Danusevičius et al 2002.…”