ศูนย์นวัตกรรมเทคโนโลยีหลังการเก็บเกี่ยว

Human vs. lightning ignition of presettlement surface fires in coastal pine forests of the upper Great Lakes.

Loope, W. L.; Anderton, J. B.;

American Midland Naturalist Year: 1998 Vol: 140 Issue: 2 Pages: 206-218 Ref: 4 pp. of ref.

1998

บทคัดย่อ

To recover direct evidence of surface fires before European settlement, fire-scarred logging-era stumps and trees of Pinus resinosa were sectioned from 39 small, physically isolated sand patches along the Great Lakes coast of northern Michigan and northern Wisconsin. Use of P. banksiana and P. strobus samples was not possible because they were, respectively, not long lived enough to provide an adequate record, or were prone to rot. While much information was lost to postharvest fire and stump deterioration, 147 fire-free intervals revealed in P. resinosa cross-sections from 29 coastal sand patches documented numerous close interval surface fires before 1910; only one post-1910 fire was documented. Cross-sections from the 10 patches with records spanning >150 yr suggest local fire occurrence rates before 1910 of ca. 10 times the present rate of lightning-caused fire. Since fire spread between or into coastal sand patches is rare, and seasonal use of the patches by indigenous people before 1910 is

 well documented both historically and ethnographically, ignition by humans probably accounts for more than half of the pre-1910 fires recorded in cross-sections.