Fire in Eastern Oak Forests conference

For the past decade the U.S. Forest Service has been sponsoring conferences on fire in eastern oak forests. The last conference was held in Carbondale, IL on 20-22 May 2008, and the proceedings are now available. Those interested in oak savanna restoration should find this publication interesting. It can be downloaded (PDF) or a print version can be obtained free by mail.

The proceedings contains full-length text of 10 papers plus 12 abstracts of posters. Over 200 people attended. Although I have not attended any of these conferences, I have been following them carefully because there is so much new information coming out on fire in oak forests.

Prescribed fire is now being used extensively in eastern oak forests, from New England to the Southern Appalachians and across the whole Midwest, all the way to Missouri and Arkansas. A lot of the recent activity has been brought about because the Forest Service and other agencies, as well as private landowners, have become aware of the great importance of fire as a management tool.

Although in Wisconsin we tend to think of fire's role in oak savanna management, throughout the eastern U.S. it also plays a major role in management of many other kinds of oak forests.

Here are a few of the topics in the 3rd proceedings:
Effect of fire on oak regeneration
Effect of oak canopy cover and fire on ground layer vegetation in oak woodlands and savannas
Fire and the endangered Indiana bat
Assessment of the accuracy of computer models for predicting fire behavior in oak forests
Control of smoke in eastern oak forest landscapes
Use of fire to restore oak ecosystems

Posters deal with fire history, oak regeneration, effect of fire on maples, role of fire in forest management, and many other topics.

The link below is to the web site of the Northern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service , which is in Pennsylvania. They have lots of other publications available for download or for distribution in printed form. Among those I found especially interesting was a Photo guide for estimating risk to hardwood trees during prescribed burning operations in eastern oak forests which dealt not only with oaks, but with other tree species found in eastern oak forests.

Proceedings 3rd Fire in Eastern Oak Forests