Ecosystem Ecology
The southeastern United States contains isolated sub-xeric forest communities that are dependent upon fire to maintain their structure and species composition. Because fire effects are dependent upon the fire frequency, seasonality, and intensity, knowing the historical fire regime for a location can greatly aid land managers as they design appropriate management plans. Luckily this fire history can be preserved by trees that survive and retain a record of the fire through altered growth rings and charcoal deposited between annual growth rings. Pilot Mountain State Park has one of these fire dependent plant communities and recent work (Kuppinger & Rich 2019) has established the park’s fire history back to the mid-1800s. This proposal will build on that work through two lines of research.
The first line of research will add to the fire history of Pilot Mtn by analyzing samples collected in 2022. Among these cross sections are some from stumps left by hand-logging in the early 1900’s which should enable the fire history to be extended to the early 1800’s. Though some additional field collecting may occur, this project will focus on analyzing collected samples. The second research area will start developing a fire history for Hanging Rock State Park. Some initial samples were collected there during the summer of 2022 but many areas of the park remain un-surveyed and un-sampled. This project will involve identifying, collecting, processing, and analyzing samples.