Fire is a dominant ecosystem process throughout the ecocultural systems of the southeastern United States. Cultural burning and lightning ignitions contributed to the evolutionary history and diversity of the region’s pine savannas. However, contemporary fire regimes have been heavily disrupted since the arrival of settler colonists in the 1500s. By the 20th century, fire-exclusion was nearly ubiquitous across the southeastern US.

In a few rare instances, fire was not excluded from the landscape. For example, The Red Hills of northern Florida and southern Georgia is a unique ecocultural region where fire has not been excluded. Fire has been maintained in these habitats for a variety of reasons, but especially to promote habitat for northern bobwhite quail. Other examples of habitats protected from fire-exclusion include the Wade and Larkin Tracts, which were also spared from intensive agriculture. These remnant habitats offer a crucial lens into the historic composition, structure, and function of forest ecosystems in the southeastern US. The Red Hills region hosts many native species. There are a variety of oak including southern live oak, water oak, laurel oak, white oak, overcup oak, post oak, eastern black oak, and other hardwoods such as American sweetgum, a variety of magnolia species, as well as hickory, flowering dogwood, red maple, and redbud. Conifers are also abundant, including shortleaf pine, and loblolly pine. Further, these sites contain some of the best examples of old-growth longleaf pine uplands existing today and serve as reference sites for adaptive restoration goals.

Restoration of fire-excluded pine ecosystems in the region must grapple with the complexity of reintroducing fires into long unburned stands laden with surface fuels, litter, and duff. Where fire has been excluded, structure and composition has changed significantly, away from open canopy conditions and a grass-dominated understory and towards moist, hardwood-dominated, and closed-canopy forests. Loss of fire in these ecosystems has also led to deep accumulation of fuels on the forest floor, whose consumption by fire can stress or kill overstory pines when fire occurs. Successful reintroduction of fire requires multiple applications under moist conditions. This allows for repeated, yet light, surface fuel consumption which enables overstory trees to survive and rebuild their vigor and fire resilience.

Contributors: Morgan Varner and Nicole Zampieri