Fire
Fire Management involves both fire suppression and proactively using fire to achieve set goals. Fire effectively and efficiently reduces the level of hazardous fuels thus reducing risks and costs. Fire has been an essential natural process in Southern Appalachian oak and pine forests for thousands of years, and its absence over the past century has transformed our forests. Learn more about the fascinating relationship between fire and forest here in Georgia.
Wildfire Information
Wildland fire can be a friend and a foe. In the right place at the right time, wildland fire can create many environmental benefits, such as reducing grass, brush, and trees that can fuel large and severe wildfires and improving wildlife habitat. In the wrong place at the wrong time, wildfires can wreak havoc, threatening lives, homes, communities, and natural and cultural resources.
Prescribed Fire Management
Prescribed fire refers to the controlled application of fire by a team of fire experts under specified weather conditions to reintroduce the beneficial effects of fire into an ecosystem and reduce the hazard of catastrophic wildfire caused by excessive fuel buildup.
Fire Prevention and Firewise
Every year, wildfires burn across the U.S., and more and more people are living where wildfires are a real risk. Nearly 45 million homes abut or intermingle with wildlands and more than 72,000 U.S. communities are now at risk. But, by working together, residents can make their homes - and their communities - safer from wildfire.
Fire Resources
Each year we hire permanent wildland fire positions during our Fire Hire event, usually in September or early October.
Fire has been an essential natural process in Appalachian oak and pine forests for thousands of years.
Researchers studying fire-scarred trees have found that fires occurred periodically, often every 3-9 years, dating back to the mid-1600s, and soil charcoal records show that fire has been a part of these mountains for at least 10,000 years. Lightning caused some fires, and Native Americans intentionally set others to help open the forest understory, which increased plant diversity, improved browse for wildlife, and made travelling easier.
Early European settlers continued to use fire as a tool to shape their surroundings. They used fire to clear land and saw that occasional fires kept ridgetops open and sunny, which increased wild blueberry crops and also provided benefits for grazing livestock and game.
However, after the turn of the 20th century, the number of people had significantly increased, and fires began to be seen as destructive, so state and federal agencies were assigned to aggressively fight forest fires. The subsequent absence of fire during that time transformed our forests. There are fewer grasses and other open habitat plants, and there are more shrubs and tree species in our forests that are not adapted to fire. The total number of trees per acre is unnaturally high and oaks and some species of pines have had trouble regenerating in the closed canopy conditions.
Read more:
Prescribed fire on the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest
(USDA Forest Service)