FOREST FIRES IMPORTANCE AND EXTENT 



69 



valuable timber. Burned timber means the loss of direct and 

 indirect wages, taxes, and other public benefits. 

 7. Destroyed much game, many camping grounds, and other rec- 

 reational facilities. 



The resultant effects of forest fires have been enormous in some 

 sections of the country. Frequently it is generations before the fer- 

 tility of the soils may be revived. Floods often follow fires and do 

 considerable damage, as in southern California and the Appalachian 



FIG. 34. Fire crew at work combating a surface fire in longleaf pine stand, 



Georgia. Surface fires burn over millions of acres in the southern pine forests 



every year and do much damage to reproduction and standing timber. 



Mountains. One of the major problems of American forestry is to 

 rebuild depreciated forests that are in exceedingly poor growing con- 

 dition as the result of repeated burnings. 

 Fires may be classified as follows: 



1. Crown fires which burn in the crowns of coniferous growth and 

 generally kill the trees outright. These are the most destruc- 

 tive and damaging forms of fires; they are generally found 

 only in the coniferous stands of the Pacific Coast and the 

 Rocky Mountains, but sometimes in the Lake States, the 





