>Fire extinguisher! Which need to be checked on occasion (they do deteriorate in effectiveness over time) and replaced when needed.

Another tree-ring researcher here! Glad to see colleages over there. Where/what is the ecosystem or biome and region in which you found the highest fire recurrence??

I am currently funded by various sources including the National Science Foundation and the North Carolina Collaboratory. I also sometimes go for small, internal awards (through my university) that support research. Additionally, I sometimes work with land management agencies to make agreements/contracts for work.

I’m not sure I understand your question in terms of what you mean by a pathway to independence…can you explain more?

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Fantastic- thank you so much!

There are many hardwood species in the South that could be considered fire tolerant. Some of them are considered pyrophytic, meaning that they have flammable characteristics (flammable leaf litter) and adaptive strategies for protection or recovery from fire (thick bark, ability to resprout). There are some fire-scar studies in oaks! Mike Stambaugh comes to mind as one researcher who has done some fire-scar work in oaks - see: https://treerings.missouri.edu/publications/ That said, some oaks have challenging tree rings to work with or do not scar as frequently as some of the pines we use for this research.

I'll copy my response from a similar question that was asked below!

>Great question! I think a recent study that I completed with colleagues in the Red Hills Region of Florida and Georgia was especially fascinating. Most tree-ring based fire history studies show almost no fire activity in the 1900s and later. This is because of the “Smokey Bear Effect” - people stopped allowing fires to burn in the U.S. through direct fire suppression. There were also changes in fuels related to development (e.g., roads that disrupted fire spread) and cattle and sheep grazing that inhibited fire occurrence and spread in much of the U.S. What was interesting about the Red Hills study is that we found TONS of fire activity through the 1900s and up to the present day. The Red Hills have long been known as a region where the burning never stopped, but we provided hard evidence of this claim through the fire scars.
>
>Here’s a link to that publication:
>
>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112720311750

Absolutely! There are so many so I can’t be comprehensive in my answer, but here are some suggestions of researchers who work with PhD students!

Rae Crandall, University of Florida

• Grant Harley, University of Idaho
• Scott Stephens, University of California Berkeley
• Don Falk, University of Arizona
• Rosemary Sherriff, Humboldt
• Max Moritz, UCSB
• Heather Alexander, Auburn University
• Mike Chamberlain, University of Georgia
• Marcus Lashley, University of Florida
• Mike Stambaugh, University of Missouri

When I was in college, we constantly discussed the ecological benefits of fire. The biggest hurdle at the time and I assume it's still the case, is public buy-in. Do you feel that progress is being made in that area? A decade ago, it felt pretty bleak, as the benefits were universally known in the natural/environmental science community, but were hitting a brick wall changing public perception on any sort of scalable front. (Exceptions being made to naturalist groups, hunting organizations, and such).

Good question! There are many people who are trying to understand how to significantly increase the pace and scale of prescribed burning in the US. The National Association of State Foresters publishes a regularly updated report on the use of prescribed fire across the US. In the 2021 report that was just recently published (https://www.stateforesters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2021-National-Rx-Fire-Use-Report_FINAL.pdf) they identified nine impediments to the use of prescribed fire: capacity, weather, air quality / smoke management, resource/funding, public perceptions, liability/insurance, permitting/legal concerns, WUI/population growth and agency/landowner priorities. The report provides a bit more information about each of these categories, but it’s likely that limitations vary by region and locality.

Do you know of any new proactive methods that could prevent wildfires during the summer months?

Back burning has been helpful, but I think hydro gels (flame retardant) will be needed as a proactive method rather than reactive.

I was in Canberra during the 2020 bushfires and witnessed how modern firefighting methods are not viable against the types of fires we now have. Especially against a pyrocumulonimbus storm. These are becoming more frequent as our climate changes.

What's the best way for someone to put out an indoor fire?

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Prescribed burning is extremely beneficial and there is no perfect replacement. The ecosystems we burn with prescribed fire evolved with fire and require frequent fire to maintain healthy conditions. Additionally, the prescribed fires can actually help protect people! First, the prescribed fires reduce fuels (living and dead plants) and decrease the likelihood of a much more dangerous, unplanned wildfire. Second, less smoke is produced by a prescribed fire than a wildfire and this smoke can be managed through strategic burning to minimize smoke to sensitive areas like surrounding communities. Alternatives to burning (like mowing down vegetation or using herbivores) can be beneficial in certain areas where prescribed fires aren’t feasible, but they do not perform the exact same roles as fire performs on the landscape.

There’s nothing that works on an ecosystem scale like wildfire. And that’s a very anthropocentric question… people move into a landscape that has depended on periodic burning for millennia, and then people ask why there has to be periodic smoke in the local community

Good question! Fire severity is a great way of attempting to quantify the variable impacts of fire. From a remote sensing perspective (typically satellite), there are multiple techniques that have been developed to identify and map patterns of post-fire burn severity. Many of these techniques use multispectral satellite sensors. The normalized burn ratio (NBR) and its variations (dNBR) come to mind. There is even a national (US) archive of burn severity maps available for free online from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project led by the USGS (https://www.mtbs.gov/). For assessing burn severity from the ground, you might consider looking into a technique called the Composite Burn Index (CBI). Link for more info here: https://burnseverity.cr.usgs.gov/products/cbi.

>Great question! Yes, there is some evidence that forests are recovering more slowly (or not at all) after fire. We see a lot of this research coming out of the western U.S. For example, for my dissertation work, my colleagues and I documented very limited tree regeneration after wildfires in ponderosa pine woodlands in the Colorado Front Range. I’ve also been involved in several larger studies (meta-analyses) that combine data from different areas to show that this problem isn’t isolated and is a major one across many western landscapes. This research has successfully shown that changes in climate are at least partly to blame - hotter, drier conditions after fire can make it much harder for tree seedlings to germinate and survive. Changes in fire severity (also related to climate change) can also create challenges for forest recovery. For example, ponderosa pine only disperses its seeds short distances, so if a large, severe fire kills all the mature pines in an area, recovery can be very slow.

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We see a lot of variation in historical fire regimes in terms of the fire frequency and intensity. In some places, the fire history might show a fire frequency of every 1-5 years. In other landscapes, the natural fire regime might show fires occurring every 10-20 years. Longleaf pine ecosystems have the highest natural fire frequency. An important thing to remember with the fire scar research is that we can only use fire scars when fires are relatively low in intensity and the trees survive. Some forests in North America are meant to only burn at high severity very rarely (e.g., every century), but it’s much harder to use fire scars in these systems; only around the fire edges where some trees might have survived. If you’re interested in fire frequency in the US, check out the PC2FM model of predicted potential natural fire return intervals based on physical chemistry factors alone (https://oakfirescience.com/research-brief/predicting-fire-frequency-with-chemistry-and-climate/). It’s a fascinating model that uses only physical factors to predict how much fire our landscapes might sustain. This model doesn't even include anthropogenic ignitions, which we know are and have been truly significant in many landscapes!

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>I smoke the lightest of the lightest available. It's like smoking air. Anything higher than that, I can't deal with. Does it make any difference?

We're back answering some lingering questions.

Unfortunately, no! “Light” cigarettes aren’t any safer than regular cigarettes. This was a marketing technique used by tobacco companies to make cigarettes appear safer, but research shows that tar exposure from a light cigarette can be just as high from a regular cigarette.

I am an NCSU student in FOR 531. What is the most interesting/ unexpected data you have found from tree rings?

>I have seen nicotine inhalers sold over the counter in Canada (Amazon search) yet they are not sold in the US, from what I can tell. Are these inhalers effective and if so, do you know why they are not sold in the US?

We’re trying to answer some lingering questions! In the U.S. you need a prescription from your doctor for nicotine inhalers but they are available. Nicotine inhalers are a useful NRT because many people who smoke are used to receiving nicotine hand-to-mouth which can reduce craving separately from just the nicotine that is delivered.

I have a lot of experience with prescribed fire but no experience fighting wildfires! Of course the wildfire environment tends to be much more challenging and unpredictable. Fortunately for me, I haven’t experienced anything too sketchy/terrifying in my experience with prescribed fire. I have experienced spotting (on many burns!) where a bit of fire goes outside the boundaries of the prescribed fire. This is a bit nerve wracking but we are always prepared with water and tools (shovels, rakes, etc.) to put out these fires before they get out of hand. I have found that good communication and keeping calm are the two most important things to managing challenging situations like these - talk to the team, make a plan, and keep your head calm and collected! And make sure to be ready for changes in the weather/fire conditions!

What's the earliest forest fire we have on record?