WASHINGTON, D.C.—Tucked among the pines, just off the beaten path from the greater Philadelphia area suburbs, the Silas Little Experimental Forest produces and facilitates remarkable contributions to prescribed fire research, drawing scientists from across the country and the world to the research station in the pine forests of southern New Jersey.

Si Little, as it's called, has a long historical connection to prescribed fire research. Stands of loblolly and pitch pine, planted by the Forest Service scientist Silas Little almost 60 years ago, tower in rows just outside the station’s historic structures. The experimental forest’s namesake studied and advocated for the use of prescribed fire in the 1930s, a time when it was scientifically considered a backward practice. The roots of landscape management through intentional fire in New Jersey go even deeper; Indigenous Lenape people continuously sculpted the landscape with a “highly skilled” form of fire ecology prior to displacement by European settlers.

On a recent visit, Michael Gallagher, research ecologist and scientist-in-charge of the experimental forest, shared his impressive knowledge of both the station and the landscape’s history of management through fire. He described how a 1946 wildfire that burned near the station was stopped by an area of forest Little had previously burned for experiments. The event served as a turning point in local attitudes toward prescribed fire because it supported the research Silas Little was producing with tangible results.

Despite its storied past, the station doesn’t just rest on its historic laurels; under Gallagher’s leadership it continues to be a place of research and innovation. Terrestrial laser scanning (a type of ground-based lidar) is one emerging technology being researched for monitoring fuels distributions in forests. The forest has been involved in the early research into this affordable tool and its application to prescribed fire for land managers. Terrestrial laser scanning can help measure fuels below the forest canopy, something that aerial lidar imaging is not well-equipped to do. It can be implemented quickly and inexpensively by land managers, who would take a bread loaf-sized tool on a tripod out onto the landscape and get a three-dimensional scan of an area within under a minute. This data may be used on its own or combined with aerial lidar imaging for a more comprehensive dataset to quantify forest management needs or effects.

In support of the objectives of the National Wildfire Crisis Strategy, Gallagher has led the facility to develop collaboration across federal agency lines and emphasize the co-production of research with land managers. The station has built a strong relationship with the local branch of the Naval Wildfire Crisis team, who have an office at the Department of Defense’s Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst, also known as Fort Dix, located just miles from the research station. The station leverages this partnership to perform research on prescribed burns at Fort Dix in collaboration with the Naval Wildfire Crisis team as well as visiting scientists. A national forest was briefly established on 6,000 acres of Fort Dix in 1925 by President Coolidge, relayed Gallagher. This order was reversed three years later by President Roosevelt, ending the Dix National Forest.

The Silas Little Experimental Forest has a rich history and a promising future. Located under a three-hour drive from New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC., the station is uniquely accessible in comparison to many experimental and national forests, offering an ideal location for hosting training and demonstrations for prescribed fire science and decision support tools. As climate change and volatility affect ecosystems and landscapes in the 21st century with increases in wildfire season and severity, the research and collaborative approach undertaken at Si Little are important as ever.

This field trip was made possible as part of RL Martens’ Resource Assistant Program internship with the National Recruitment Team. Both RL Martens and his mentor, Deb Beighley, want to thank Michael Gallagher and the Silas Little Experimental Forest for hosting them.