Browsing by Author "Vaughan, Matthew C."

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    Effects of burn season on fire-excluded plant communities in the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA
    Vaughan, Matthew C.; Hagan, Donald L.; Bridges, William C., Jr.; Barrett, Kyle; Norman, Steve; Coates, T. Adam; Klein, Rob (Elsevier, 2022-07)
    Following decades of fire exclusion, managers are increasingly implementing prescribed fire in southern Appalachian forests. To date, the use of prescribed fire in the region has often been focused on reducing hazardous fuel loads and has typically occurred in the dormant season. Understanding the effects of burning in different periods of plant growth may reveal how burn season influences patterns of vegetative succession. In this study, we compared the effects of prescribed burn treatments conducted in the dormant season (January-early April) vs. the early growing season (mid-late April) on changes in plant abundance by understory, midstory, and overstory forest strata. Plant groups were distinguished by growth habit, stem origin, functional characteristics, and species of management interest (red maple (Acer rubrum L.) and mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia L.)). Burn season had minimal effect on understory cover, density, richness, or diversity. In the midstory, early growing season burns were more effective in reducing shrub density than dormant season burns (-1,585 +/- 188 ha- 1 vs. -813 +/- 240 ha- 1, respectively), with greater differences among smaller stems. Early growing season burns also reduced midstory red maple density to a greater degree than dormant season burns (-356 +/- 57 ha- 1 vs. -219 +/- 69 ha- 1), a response that was not observed among other mesophytic hardwood species. Burning slightly reduced canopy cover, but neither canopy cover nor overstory density response varied by burn season. Our results demonstrate that managers may find increased opportunities to promote forest restoration objectives in the southern Appalachians by extending the use of prescribed fire into the early growing season.
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    How do fire behavior and fuel consumption vary between dormant and early growing season prescribed burns in the southern Appalachian Mountains?
    Vaughan, Matthew C.; Hagan, Donald L.; Bridges, William C.; Dickinson, Matthew B.; Coates, T. Adam (2021-10-26)
    Background Despite the widespread use of prescribed fire throughout much of the southeastern USA, temporal considerations of fire behavior and its effects often remain unclear. Opportunities to burn within prescriptive meteorological windows vary seasonally and along biogeographical gradients, particularly in mountainous terrain where topography can alter fire behavior. Managers often seek to expand the number of burn days available to accomplish their management objectives, such as hazardous fuel reduction, control of less desired vegetation, and wildlife habitat establishment and maintenance. For this study, we compared prescribed burns conducted in the dormant and early growing seasons in the southern Appalachian Mountains to evaluate how burn outcomes may be affected by environmental factors related to season of burn. The early growing season was defined as the narrow phenological window between bud break and full leaf-out. Proportion of plot area burned, surface fuel consumption, and time-integrated thermocouple heating were quantified and evaluated to determine potential relationships with fuel moisture and topographic and meteorological variables. Results Our results suggested that both time-integrated thermocouple heating and its variability were greater in early growing season burns than in dormant season burns. These differences were noted even though fuel consumption did not vary by season of burn. The variability of litter consumption and woody fuelbed height reduction were greater in dormant season burns than in early growing season burns. Warmer air temperatures and lower fuel moisture, interacting with topography, likely contributed to these seasonal differences and resulted in more burn coverage in early growing season burns than in dormant season burns. Conclusions Dormant season and early growing season burns in southern Appalachian forests consumed similar amounts of fuel where fire spread. Notwithstanding, warmer conditions in early growing season burns are likely to result in fire spread to parts of the landscape left unburnt in dormant season burns. We conclude that early growing season burns may offer a viable option for furthering the pace and scale of prescribed fire to achieve management objectives.