I'm speaking with Ryan Bean, he is a member of the
Forestry and Wildlife team with Clemson
Extension. And Ryan, you are going to
talk to us today about prescribed burns which
are and they burns happened naturally long
before man got involved in at least in the
southeast, if I'm not mistaken. Absolutely correct.
Before we were here, wildfires would have burned
across the landscape freely, they wouldn't be
the wildfires you and I picture though. They would have
been nice, calm, you know moving fires. Of course they'd
flare up depending on the vegetation type and
all, but they would have been you know meandering and leave
large patches unburned even and just the
landscape have been completely different.
Yeah fire was definitely here before us.
And since we talked about wildlife being in
your title that was critical for
wildlife because it lets more sunlight come in as I
understand it. And then you get a whole different
group of plants responding that are very
important for pollinators and pollinators. Then it
just keeps moving up the food web. Is that some of
the reason that these fires are so important?
Yeah, absolutely. And one of the easiest pieces
to discuss when you talk from a fire
bobwhite quail. If you don't have fire, it's gonna
be really hard to get Bob white quail for the exact
same reason you just described. They're looking.
They could care less if there's a
tree in sight. So, this idea there has to be
these open forest to encourage Bob white is just kind of
a myth. But what you're looking for is that
shrubby layer to come in underneath and
those shrubs and those herbs, herbaceous plants
that are coming they're what attract those insects that
you're talking about. And that's what our small ground
nesting birds are looking for. And pollinators
as well, I mean it's critical for them and we
know that we have a lot of native
pollinators, flies, bees and things like that. And so
that helps them in this time that they seem to be
suffering so from habitat loss and other reasons as
well. Correct. Yeah, with that kind of fire you're just not
resetting that time clock of the plants and
regenerating what these wildlife species
are looking for. Well, how come the trees
don't get all burned up? And do some trees that
you don't want get burned up? They do. Our plants
you know in most cases have natural
adaptations to deal with their surroundings,
their environment. and so pine trees especially have a
very insulating bark. And so that's what they use
their natural adaptation to survive
fires as compared to something like a red
maple or some sweet gum, you know.
Some of the sweet gum, depending on know where they're at
they'll have a little thicker bark for the
most part our hardwood trees are more
susceptible to fire. So, if we have an area
that was prone to fire and have fire on a regular basis it
would have more than likely been
dominated by pine trees, whereas now when
we've excluded fire for so long and serrated a
lot of areas, we're getting more sweet gum
and woody plants that would have
naturally been eliminated or excluded by fire.
And you said that sometimes y'all will find areas that
should have been burned and because the owner
might have been in failing health for a number
of years or various transfers of the title,
you have to go in and in not
necessarily ideal conditions and make
adjustments for that as well. Yeah, so there's a
lot of land transfers happening these days and
people that held land for number of years and
generations even and just the generations
have changed. And the people are just not wanting
to hold on to it that might have though they might have
held on to it throughout the families.
But through those transfers, you know, it
takes time you know for people to pass on for
people to change hands and for people to kind of
realize what they've got or if they're gonna hold
onto it, So, like you said it does take time and
what happens during that time frame is the fuels
build up and we end up in a situation where it
could be a more difficult fire to control. The other
thing that's planned against us I'm sure we'll talk about
here a little bit, a little more is just the
weather patterns are holding us back too.
And so today I think we're going to talk about
a situation that was not, you did not expect
because with prescribed burns y'all do a great
deal of research before and getting
permission, before you set that fire. Yeah sure. When we
look at a site that we're considering burning, we're
looking at the overstory plants, the understorey plants,
the fuel types, the fuel loading, how much fuel there
actually there that could burn,
what the conditions are in neighboring stands that
could pose a risk if our fire was to escape, what our
smoke sensitive areas are and that's probably the
most important thing for us to consider is where's
our smoke gonna go? What is it going to impact
when it does get there? And how can we mitigate
those problems? And so, we're taking a look at
all these things and like you mentioned if the law
does require us to notify fire departments locally
to us as well as getting a burn notification number
through the state forestry commission.
At the Sandhill REC, there's
been a huge encroachment of residential and some
commercial property. And the latest fire that
y'all were involved in that did not end up quite
as you wanted it to, was in that area. So, let's
talk about how large an area you were trying to
burn what you thought the fuel load might have been
and what eventually happened, please Ryan.
Yes so typically when we're burning them in woods
and setting up for prescribed burn, on average I'd say
our fuel loading is somewhere around four to
six tons per acre, when I write a burn plan.
That's understanding it's been managed through timber
harvests or prior burn history or whatever it
may have been. Four to six tons is a good
average for a managed end. But in this particular
area, we were burning, it was only about an acre.
So, it really was a very small block really
you're just looking at it and our past history you
know we would expected this to take you know,
thirty minutes to an hour at most. Really?
Yeah, because we already had a fire breaks like
you're supposed to. We already had
everything in place, our equipment. We had enough
personnel and we show up and it should have been a
nice quick burn. The fire just kind of
meandered around there for us and I
can back a little bit that the fuel loading in
this area was somewhere closer like fourteen
tons breaker. Whoa. That's a huge number,
huge difference when you start looking at things.
And but we have the
conditions that we wanted. And we wanted to just
skim off the top because one of the things we run
into is when you have that high build up of
organic matter in those fuels,, we end up getting
encroachment of the root systems up into that and
so we wanted to just skim off the top. So, we didn't
burn up all of our roots there up in there and in
damage or cause mortality or trees. So, in this case
you weren't trying to remove the whole fourteen
tons. You just wanted to start reducing it and over time
get it back to where it would have been
the right amount. Is that correct? That's correct.
Yeah because you know putting fire back in there,
our goal with this stand and with the stand on
with the REC is to get back into a
manageable state where we can do things more regularly
without as much concern. Or what without the depth
of concern that we've got right now because of the
state that they're in. But it also opens it up
to you know various wildlife management
practices, encouraging different habitats,
different species composition. And so
that's where we're working towards. You're right. We just
wanted to skim off that top layer and them maybe
come back in another year and do it again. Keep
working at it and whittle it away. So, you all did
everything looked like it was a good to go and then
what did you think it ended up - because as I
understand it ended up just kind of smoldering.
So, it was. I guess there was some quick fire.
And then was it just like I camp fire? might
be the all overnight just kind of putting out smoke?
Yeah. Great example, Amanda. That works out
really well, because it is exactly like that.
We lit our fire. It burned. It took a little
longer than expected our wind wasn't kind of as strong
as we had hoped. We were looking more like four to
six miles an hour wind in the stand and it really
was more like one to two. And so, the fire just kind
of meandered around on us. And plus there's a good
bit of scrub oak in the stand. And so the
hardwood leaves kind of slowed things down too,
whereas if it was just strictly pine straw,
it typically is a little bit faster moving, a little
bit prior. If you have zero when you light a
match, it's just gonna expand at its own rate as
they can preheat the fuels in advance of the
flame and cause them to combust. That would take
forever and obviously, we have narrow windows and
time frames we have to get a fire going,
because of the smoke management guidelines that are
in place and that kind of thing. And so most
times we try to start somewhere around ten or
eleven o'clock in the morning once the dew is lifted.
Humidity starting to stabilize. And we try to
be done by three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
And so course we're just doing one acre this time,
but again the situation we're in and the location
we're in, we try to just get things done
as quickly as we can to provide more of a buffer
on the backside to clean things up. And so, we
did that and then everything looks good we mopped
up a few hot spots, which is being let out.
Put some water on some stomp holes and maybe a snag
that had some rock resin on it that was burning up
the side of the bark. Yeah, but then we started
getting calls later that week that there was still
smoke. Come to find out, you know, just
our humidity it stayed pretty low and we
saw all these things coming but we didn't
see it staying for as long as it did. The weather
forecasts didn't look that way when we made our
initial assessment, made our plan and lit the fire.
But it turns out they did stay low and so that meant
that the duff layer that was left behind after we
burned across the most recent fuels that it
dropped at the litter it continued to burn into
that duff layer and consume you know the
more stuff underneath. And it just it
there's no real active flame when that happens
it's just that heat is contained within that
litter layer and it just continues to smolder
along. And a long time what you'll see is the
litter around the base of the tree is
what's consumed and really that's typically because that's
the barks sloughs off outside of a tree and it falls down.
It lands in such a way that there's more oxygen
around it. You all stayed on top of it. It wasn't like
you just said this is just what happened.
Sandhill REC is somewhere around five
hundred some acres I believe. And so it's
big piece of property but it's not huge and the
people that work there are constantly you're
checking the property out, making sure things are
all right, especially since the public's out there,
you've got to keep constant eye on things to
make sure everything's working as it should
and everybody's okay.
But yeah just checking in on it and then getting a few calls
we did and the fire department showed up a
time or two I believe. Just to come back and check
on things as a result of the calls they were
getting. But yeah we definitely
stay on top of it and kept putting water out as
necessary. If people have questions
about prescribed burns and the things that y'all do,
do y'all take calls from the public?
I work and Kershaw County is my home office
and I've got five counties here in the Pee Dee.
But I'm more than willing to travel to state
if I need to or help whoever I can.
With our position with Extension, we're
here to just provide science based information and
unbiased information and just help provide the
best information to better the lives of our
clients. So, If I can help somebody understand fire
and how it might apply to their land
a little better, I'd be more than happy to help them
and they can feel free to reach out to me and my email is
rbean@clemson.edu All right.
Ryan, thank you so much for sharing
this information with us. And we may want to
check with you as the Summer progresses and
find out how things are going moving forward. Okay,
Thank you, Amanda.