Aboriginal and white man share jointly the 

 responsibility for the tremendous burned areas in 

 Interior Alaska. Aboriginal man had no easy 

 way of starting a fire; so when he once had one 

 burning, he was loath to put it out. Extinguishing 

 a fire also was quite a chore as tools were very 

 primitive and much hard work was required. 

 Early man had many uses for fire, the more 

 prevalent being communication by smoke signals, 

 hunting by driving game into pockets or into the 

 water by setting fires, fighting hostile tribes by 

 advancing firelines, and combating insect pests; 

 in fact, it has been said that mosquitoes are the 

 cause of more forest fires than any other one 

 thing. Clearing the forest for easier travel and 

 obtaining dry fuel wood were other common 

 reasons for setting fires (Lutz 1959). 



The white man set fires for many of the 

 same reasons as the aboriginals, but he also 

 had reasons of his own: to accelerate growth of 

 grass for livestock, to clear crop land, to see 

 rock surfaces better when prospecting, to remove 

 vegetative cover for strip mining, to clear road 

 and railroad rights-of-way, and just to see fire 

 burn. Carelessness and indifference by both 

 aboriginal and white man have resulted in keep- 

 ing timberland from progressing to climax status. 



The militarily strategic location of Alaska, 

 and the Nation's reliance upon air defense have 

 prompted a large number of meteorological re- 

 search projects during the past decade or more. 

 Information gathered for forecasters particularly 

 interests fire research personnel because of the 

 wealth of data on air circulation, winds, pressure 

 distribution, and storm patterns, as described by 

 Arctic Weather Central, 1 1th Weather Squadron 

 (1950); U.S. Weather Bureau, Climate and Crop 

 Weather Division (1943); and Elmendorf Fore- 

 cast Center Headquarters (1953). Use of the cold 

 polar lows, as studied by Reed and Tank (1956) 

 is important to fire-weather forecasting, particu- 

 larly in predicting the effect of upper lows as 

 summer storms move along the fringe of the 

 Arctic land mass. Reed's work (1958, 1959) 

 points up the importance of atmospheric influ- 

 ence on the whole fire season and on individual 

 fires. 



This Nation has a large inventory of wood 

 for lumber and fiber products. By 1975 the de- 

 mand will come close to the available supply,- 



by 2000 the demand will far exceed the supply 

 unless better forestry practices are employed or 

 vast new sources of timber are found. Three- 

 fourths of the commercial forest land in the 

 United States is privately owned, and 86 percent 

 of the ownership is in tracts of 100 acres or less. 

 The anticipated rate of gross national product 

 increase, and likewise timber demands, is 

 greater than the population increase because the 

 standard of living is expected to increase. At 

 present there is no excess of commercial forest 

 lands; less will be available in the future upon 

 which to grow a greater amount of timber (U.S. 

 Forest Service 1958). 



Protection of the Alaskan forests from fire 

 is an essential feature of all future planning. 

 Protection and management of our extensive 

 present and potential timber resource of Interior 

 Alaska may provide that extra wood and fiber 

 necessary to get us "over the hump." 



Interior Alaskan forest resources are now 

 being carefully surveyed by photographic tech- 

 niques. The major problem is determining the 

 potential timber type on formerly forested land 

 and also differentiating between land that is 

 capable of producing industrial wood and land 

 that is not. Lutz and Caporaso (1958) consider 

 forest land classification indicators from two pri- 

 mary standpoints — vegetation and topographic 

 situations. The completed survey and map proj- 

 ect may serve as a basis for broad-scale fuel 

 type classification. 



When speaking of wildlife population and 

 distribution and forest cover, Alaska has been 

 referred to as a continuum of edge. "The forest 

 wildlife of Alaska is truly more a product of the 

 edge, transition types, forest line, and timber 

 line than of specific forest types . . . the ranges 

 of various species of wildlife are neither distinct 

 nor constant for forest type" (Nelson 1960, p. 

 461). The 2-million-acre Kenai National Moose 

 Range, managed by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries 

 and Wildlife, becomes one cf silvicultural manip- 

 ulations to retard the succession from birch- 

 aspen to climax spruce stands, and to convert 

 mature forests of both types by mechanical, 

 chemical, and controlled burning methods into 

 young hardwood growth essential for maximum 

 production of browse. The story of reindeer dif- 

 fers from that of the multitude of other game 



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