FIRE AS A TOOL IN SOUTHERN PINE 



ARTHUR W. HARTMAN 



For three centuries people in the 

 South have practiced woods burning. 

 The custom began in the Coastal 

 Plain flatwoods, where groups of set- 

 tlers had to clear ground for farm- 

 ing and then for their livestock. They 

 soon learned that late winter was a 

 critical period for their stock the 

 ground had a cover of dead grass, 

 needles, and litter, and the animals 

 fared badly. But on a fresh winter burn 

 new and succulent grass would spring 

 up to tide their stock over until spring. 

 They set fires also to clear the woods 

 of varmints. 



The settlers, observing some bene- 

 ficial effects, came to believe the whole 

 practice beneficial and, with the pas- 

 sage of time, the population developed 

 customs and community procedures 

 for burning the Coastal Plain pinelands 

 about every second or third winter. 

 When the people migrated inland to 

 the rolling uplands of the Piedmont 

 and the Appalachian, Arkansas, and 

 Missouri Mountains, they carried with 

 them the custom of "light burning." 

 It became universal across the South. 

 They had no way of knowing the ex- 

 tent to which the custom had grown 

 away from beneficial application and 

 become seriously detrimental to the 

 then abundant timber stands. 



When trained foresters carefully ob- 

 served the results they concluded that 

 light burning had been detrimental to 

 the health, growth, and yielding capac- 

 ity of the stands affected; that it was 

 the limiting factor to good forestry 

 practice in the Coastal Plains; and 

 that eventually it would destroy the 

 hardwoods and less fire-resistant pine 

 stands of the uplands. Three figures 

 show the magnitude of the problem in 

 11 Southern States: In 1947, there 

 were 158,425 fires that burned over 

 21,005,581 acres in the total forest area 

 of 185,416,000 acres. 



One must not assume that a major 



part of a population knowingly and 

 maliciously practices or tolerates for 

 a long time a custom detrimental to the 

 community. Rather, one must under- 

 stand that generations of observation 

 by the people point to some solid rea- 

 sons for burning, even though applica- 

 tion sometimes drifted into extremes. 



A few early foresters investigated 

 and concluded that all use of fire was 

 not evil and that fire correctly used 

 under specific conditions and for pre- 

 determined results could, in fact, be 

 beneficial. Furthermore, they devel- 

 oped the thesis that the long-estab- 

 lished and deeply ingrained custom 

 would be broken only after foresters 

 themselves had clearly identified and 

 separated the helpful from the harm- 

 ful application of fire and then proved 

 the identity of the two. 



Progress toward the identification of 

 the effects to be had from fire has been 

 under way for many years. Here and 

 there observant landowners worked 

 out and applied some uses of fire on 

 their own lands. The work of such men 

 as H. M. Wilson and William Ottmeier 

 produced valuable lines of approach. 



As far as the records reveal, the 

 investigations of H. H. Chapman were 

 the first attempts to identify scientif- 

 ically and define woods conditions 

 that might be bettered by fire, to meas- 

 ure results from actual use, to create 

 guide lines for proper fire intensities, 

 and to measure the influences of cli- 

 matic conditions on fire behavior. 



The Southern Forest Experiment 

 Station twenty years ago began a series 

 of studies to determine some phases of 

 fire effects in longleaf pine stands. The 

 studies progressed until, by 1940, there 

 was evidence that net benefits were 

 obtainable from fire under certain spe- 

 cific sets of conditions. In the mean- 

 time, pilot studies were conducted on 

 longleaf pine lands in national forests. 

 The sum of the evidence disclosed a 



