224 



Tenealiicil Eiiisy.sleiiis — Our Liiiiig Resoiine.y 



For further inforniution: 



Gardner W. Ferry 



Bureau of Land Management 



Division of Fire and Aviation 



Pol ley and Management 



3905 S. Vista Ave. 



Boise, ID 83705 



recognize how society influences fire as an eco- 

 logical process. In addition, managers must uni- 

 formly use information on fire history and fire 

 effects to sustain the health of ecosystems that 

 are both fire-adapted and fire-dependent. 

 Managers must balance the suppression pro- 

 gram with a program of prescribed fire applied 

 on a landscape scale if we are to meet our stew- 

 ardship responsibilities. 



References 



Alexander, M.E., and FG. Hawksworth. 1975. Wildland 

 fires and dwarf mistletoe: a literature review of ecology 

 and prescribed burning. U.S. Forest Service Gen. Tech. 

 Rep. RM-14. Rocky Mountain Forest Range Experiment 

 Station. Fort Collins. CO. 12 pp. 



Barrett, S.W. 1980. Indians and fire. Western wildlands 

 6(3):17-21. 



Kilgore. B.M.. and M.L. Heinselman. 1990. Pages 297-335 

 in J.C. Hendee, G.M. Stankey, and R.C. Lucas, eds. Fire 

 in wilderness ecosystems. Wilderness management. 2nd 

 ed. North American Press, Golden, CO, 



Miller, R.F, and RE. Waigand. 1994. Holocene changes in 

 semi-and pinyon-juniper woodlands: response to cli- 

 mate, fire and human activities in the Great Basin. 

 Biological Science -14 (7). In press. 



Mutch, R.W., S.R Amo, J.K. Brown. C.E. Carlson. R.D. 

 Ottmar. and J.L. Peterson. 1993. Forest health in the Blue 

 Mountains: a management strategy for tire-adapted 

 ecosystems. U.S. Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW- 

 310. 14 pp. 



Nichol. A. A. 1937. The natural vegetation of Arizona. 

 University of Arizona Tech. Bull. 68. 



OTA. 1993. Preparing for an uncertain climate. 2 vols. U.S. 

 Congress. Office of Technology Assessment. 

 Washington. DC. 



Pellant, M.. and C. Hall. 1994. Distribution of two exotic 

 grasses on public lands in the Great Basin: status in 1992. 

 In Proceedings of a Symposium on Ecology. 

 Management and Restoration of Intemiountain Annual 

 Rangelands. Intemiountain Forest and Range 

 Experiment Station. Ogden, UT. 



Pyne. S.J. 1982. Fire in America: a cultural history of wild- 

 land and rural fire. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 

 NJ. 653 pp. 



Robbins, L.E., and R.L. Myers. 1992. Seasonal effects of 

 prescribed burning in Florida: a review. Tall Timbers 

 Research, Inc. Miscellaneous Publ. 8. 96 pp. 



Waldrop, T.A., D.H. Van Lear, R.T. Lloyd, and W.R. Harms. 

 1987. Long-term studies of prescribed burning of loblol- 

 ly pine forests of the southeastern Coastal Plain. U.S. 

 Forest Service Southeastern Forest Experiment Station 

 Gen. Tech. Rep. SE-45. Asheville, NC. 23 pp. 



Weaver, H. 1943. Fire as an ecological and silvicultural fac- 

 tor in the ponderosa-pine region of the Pacific Slope. 

 Journal of Forestry 41:7- 14. 



Wellner, C.A. 1970. Fire history in the northern Rocky 

 Mountains. Pages 41-64 in The role of tire in the 

 Intemiountain West. Proceedings of the Intemiountain 

 Fire Research Council Symposium, Missoula, MT 



West, N.E. 1988. Intemiountain deserts, shrub steppes, and 

 woodlands. Pages 209-230 in M.B. Barbour and W.D. 

 Billings, eds. North American terrestrial vegetation. 

 Canibndge University Press. New York. 



West. N.E.. and M.A. Hassan. 1985. Recovery of sage- 

 brush-grass vegetation following wildlife. Journal of 

 Range Management 38:131-134. 



Whisenant. S.G. 1990. Changing fire frequencies on Idaho's 

 Snake River Plains: ecological and management impli- 

 cations. Pages 4-10 in E.D. McArthur. E.M. Roniney. 

 S.D. Smith, and P.T. Tueller. eds. Proceedings of a 

 Symposium on Cheatgrass Invasion. Shrtib Die-off, and 

 Other Aspects of Shrub Biology and Management. U.S. 

 Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-276. Intemiountain 

 Forest and Range Experiment Station. Ogden, UT. 



Wnght. H.A.. and S.W. Bailey. 1982. Fire ecology: United 

 States and southern Canada. John Wiley and Sons. New 

 York. 501 pp. 



Zimmemian. G.T., and R.D. Laven. 1984. Ecological inter- 

 relationships of dwarf mistletoe and fire in lodgepole 

 pine forests. Pages 123-131 in E.G. Hawksworth and R.F. 

 Scharpf. technical coordinators. Biology of dwarf mistle- 

 toes: Proceedings of the Symposium. U.S. Forest Service 

 Gen. Tech. Rep. RM-1 1 1. Rocky Mountain Forest Range 

 Experiment Station, Fort Collins. CO. 131 pp. 



Vegetation 

 Change in 

 National Parks 



by 



Kenneth Cole 



National Biological Sen'ice 



Capitol Reef 

 National Park 



Pictured Rocks 

 National Lakeshore 



Indiana Dunes 

 National Lakeshore 



Fig. 1. Four national park units 

 studied. 



Natural ecosystems are always changing, but 

 recent changes in the United States have 

 been startlingly rapid, driven by 200 years of 

 disturbances accompanying settlement by an 

 industrialized society. Logging, grazing, land 

 clearing, increased or decreased frequency of 

 fire, hunting of predators, and other changes 

 have affected even the most remote comers of 

 the continent. Recent trends can be better 

 understood by comparisons with more natural 

 past trends of change, which can be recon- 

 structed from fossil records. Conditions before 

 widespread impacts in a region are termed "pre- 

 settlement"; conditions after the impacts are 

 "postsettlement." 



Fossil plant materials from the last few thou- 

 sand years are used to study past changes in 

 many natural areas. Pollen buried in wetlands, 

 for example, can reveal past changes in vegeta- 

 fion (Faegri and Iversen 1989), and larger fossil 

 plant parts can be studied in deserts where the 

 fossilized plant collections of packrats, called 



packrat middens, have been preserved 

 (Betancourt et al, 1990). 



This article summarizes the rates of vegeta- 

 tion change in four national park areas over the 

 last 5,000 years as reconstructed from fossil 

 pollen and packrat middens. These four national 

 park areas from different ecological regions (Fig. 

 1 ) demonstrate the flexibility of these paleoeco- 

 logical techniques and display similar results. 



Northern Indiana Prairie 



A 4,500-year history of vegetation change 

 was collected from Howes Prairie Marsh, a 

 small marsh surrounded by prairie and oak 

 savanna in the Indiana Dunes National 

 Lakeshore near the southern tip of Lake 

 Michigan. Only 40 km (25 mi) from Chicago, 

 this area has been affected by numerous impacts 

 from settlements but still supports comparably 

 pristine tall-grass prairie vegetation as well as 

 the endangered Karner blue butterfly 



