We have been burning oak savannas and oak woodlands at Pleasant Valley Conservancy for 20 years. In the early years we made lots of mistakes, as there were no sources of good information on the use of fire. (The Internet was still in its early stages.) As the years have gone by, our mistakes have been less and the sizes of our burns have been bigger.
See past posts of Tom’s Blog for summaries of our annual spring and fall burns. (To access posts of earlier years’ burns, do a Search for “Fire” and “Savanna” in the search box.)
In 2015 I was asked to give a presentation on “Fire management in oak savannas” at the annual meeting of the Prairie Enthusiasts, which prompted me to assemble photos and data for a Power Point presentation. I finally found time this past winter/early spring to convert that presentation into a PDF, which is provided in this link.
Here is a brief precis from the introduction to the tutorial:
“Oak savannas are fire dependent communities. Fire management
in oak savannas differs from that of prairies or oak woodlands. This document
provides details on how to conduct an oak savanna burn.
oak savanna restoration project should not be initiated if fire is not an
option. Ideally, fire should be used annually for at least 10 years. After 10
years, fire can continue to be used annually, but should be used at least two
out of every three years indefinitely.”
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| Early stage in an oak savanna burn. October 2002 This was the first time this savanna had been burned, and to get good burn coverage the burn was run as a headfire.
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