PARENT SESSION
Poster Session # 11: Disturbance Ecology.
Tuesday, August 5 Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. SITCC Exhibit Hall B.
Landscape quantification of fuel loads in central Appalachian mixed-oak forests.
Riccardi, Cynthia *,, McCarthy, Brian ,
ABSTRACT- Fuel loads are diverse in their physical attributes, and complex in structure and origin of their components. As the source of all forest fire behavior and fire effects, fuel loads must be characterized and quantified before any calculation of fire potential can be made. The objective of our study was to quantify the fuel loads before and after mechanical thinning and prescribed fire in three mixed-oak forests in southeastern Ohio. In each forest a control (CU), thin (TU), thin-burn (TBU), and burn (BU) unit were established in 2000. Thinning and prescribed surface fire were applied in winter 2000 and spring 2001, respectively. The Brown planar intersect method was used along seventy-two 20 m transects (n=864) to measure forest floor depth and 1-, 10-, 100-, and 1000-hour (CWD) woody fuels. For the three forests, pretreatment mean (±SE) litter (Oi and Oe) and duff (Oa) mass were 7.9 (±0.3), 2.9 (±0.19), 3.1 (±0.11) and 33.1 (±1.9), 5.4 (±0.14) and 12.7 (±0.49) MT ⋅ ha-1, respectively. Pretreatment mean minimum fuel loads were 0.32 (±0.01), 1.31 (±0.06), and 1.47 (±0.13) while, mean maximum loads were 0.38 (±0.01), 2.04 (±0.08), and 1.99 (±0.11) MT ⋅ ha-1, respectively. Pretreatment CWD volumes were 42.7 (±0.02), 22.9 (±0.02) and 40.8 (±0.05) m3⋅ ha-1 . Litter and duff were significantly decreased in TBU and BU compared to CU and TU (P<0.05). Overall, fire did not reduce the increased woody fuels produced by the thinning but thinning and fire did tend to decrease 1000-hr fuels. Finally, our results indicate a high level of heterogeneity of fuel loads across the mixed-oak forest landscape of southeastern OH.
Key words: Fuels, litter, Fire, CWD