Free Post Week 5

Controlled or Prescribed Burn

This weekend I found a very interesting and unique type of forest management called controlled burning. It’s amazing to think that burning a part of forest can actually promote that forest’s health and growth. The amount of debris and leaf litter on a forest floor can become very dry in times of drought and serve as a large risk factor in causing forest fires. Teams of foresters that use prescribed or controlled burning can move into these high risk forest areas and introduce fire into the ecosystem at ideal times. Preferable conditions allow for a very safe burn of the forest’s excess debris.

Controlled burning, to clean up after logging, can be done in two ways: broadcast burning or pile burning. Broadcast burning applies fire over a larger area of the forest and the waste materials burn at a lower temperature. With broadcast burning, the excess forest waste gives off less heat and this can contrast pile burning quite nicely. Pile burning is similar to a large bonfire and the concentration of burning waste produces a lot of heat that can damage the surrounding soil by sterilizing it. Pile burning also requires the gathering of all the forest debris and can be time consuming. Broadcast burning is the ideal and forest friendly type of burning.

The thing I found most interesting about this form of forest management is that controlled burns can combat tree disease. Healthy forest trees are naturally fire resistant and can handle the temperatures produced by broadcast burns but the invasive diseases cannot. So while cleaning up excess and unwanted competing forest vegetation, broadcast burns are also killing off invasive tree diseases.

Works Cited:

“Controlled burn.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.

‪Santa Fe Water Fund, prod. The Nature Conservancy. YouTube. Youtube, 24 Nov. 2010. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.