Figure 24. — In the mountain re- 

 gion 28 percent of the sound hard- 

 wood volume is in cull trees. The 

 basal fire scars and subsequent 

 decay resulting from forest fires 

 are major causes of cull. 



'■ ^~ **£>■- *-^u £5r* * «-- **"«*» 



dangerous than the tall season, when the chiel hazards are 

 the new-fallen leaves of the hardwoods and the dry grasses 

 and underbrush of the pine forests. 



Crown fires are infrequent, occurring only in extremely 

 dry years. Most of the fires burn only the ground litter, 

 young trees, and bases of older stems. Ground fires in the 

 pond pine and white-cedar types along the coast are often 

 difficult to control; they may penetrate the muck soils to a 

 depth of several feet, and deep encircling trenches must be 

 dug to extinguish them. 



Fires damage the forest in several ways. In both the 

 pine and hardwood stands reproduction and young trees 

 are killed outright, the proportion of undesirable hard- 

 wood sprouts on reproduction areas is increased, and stand 

 composition is often changed for the worse. Basal fire- 

 scars on hardwoods cause serious losses in volume because 

 many of the scars become infected with wood-decaying 

 fungi. Fire-scarred, partially rotten hardwood trees occupy 

 a large amount of the growing space in the mountain forests 

 (fig. 24) and their elimination is one ol the more difficult 

 problems of management. 



In spite of the protection afforded private and public 

 forest lands by the fire-control organizations of the North 

 Carolina Division of Forestry, the United States Forest 

 Service, the National Park Service, and the Indian Forest 

 Service, the losses from forest fires are still severe. In the 

 5-year period from 1935 to 1940 an average of 4,535 fires 

 burned over 426,170 acres per year. The average annual 

 damage amounted to $757,000. About two-thirds of the 

 total forested area was under protection and 1.5 percent 

 ot this land burned over annually with damage amounting 

 to $387,000. In contrast, 3 percent of the unprotected 

 land burned over each year with damage of $370,000. 



In bad fire years losses are much greater. In 1941 the 

 North Carolina Division of Forestry had 11,823,000 acres 

 under organized protection. The Coastal Plain experi- 

 enced particularly severe spring fires, which spread over 

 655,000 acres, 5.5 percent of all State-protected land. In 

 the Coastal Plain protection districts from 8 to 10 percent 

 of the protected acreage was burned. Not counting 

 damage on the national forests and the unprotected 

 private forest land in the piedmont and Coastal Plain, 

 the State-wide loss was $1 ,120,000. 



27 



