Prescribed Fire

Backing Fire in Young Slash Pine

Prescribed fire is one of the most important natural resource management tools in the South. Also called prescribed burning or controlled burning, prescribed fire is the skilled application of fire under a particular set of weather and fuel conditions to achieve one or more specific natural resource objectives. Prescribed fire has a long history in the South. Native Americans and early settlers used fire to manage their landscape. Even during the era of fire suppression, many private landowners continued to use fire. Today, all federal and state land management agencies, as well as private landowners, use prescribed fire. Approximately 8 million acres of land are burned annually in the South- more than in all other regions of the US combined (Wade et al. 2000). Most of this acreage is burned for hazardous fuel reduction, wildlife management, and range management although an increasing number of acres is burned for ecosystem restoration and maintenance. Also, while most prescribed burning is carried out in the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions, its use is increasing in the Southern Applachians and Ozark/Ouachita Highlands as historic fire regimes are reintroduced into these physiographic regions.

• History of Prescribed Fire in the South. While fire has been used by people for millenia to manage vegetation, this section describes the development of prescribed fire during the 1900s- the era of fire management.
• Uses of Prescribed Fire discusses the many management objectives prescribed fire is used for, including silviculture, hazardous fuel reduction, wildlife management, ecosystem maintenance and restoration, and disease control.
• Weather and Fuel Considerations: A general understanding of the separate and combined effects of several weather elements on fire behavior is needed to plan and execute a good prescribed burn. Wind, relative humidity, temperature, rainfall, and airmass stability are important elements to consider because these factors influence fuel moisture.
• Firing Techniques: Heading fires, backing fires, and flanking fires can be combined in various ways for other firing techniques, such as point source fires and circular fires. The particular fire technique chosen must be correlated closely with burning objectives, fuels, topography, and weather factors to prevent damage to forest resources.
• Planning and Conducting Prescribed Fires summarizes important steps to follow from planning to evaluating a prescribed fire. This section also includes rules of thumb and red flag situations to consider when conducting prescribed fires.
• State Prescribed Burning Statutes summarizes current statutory law pertaining to prescribed fires in the in 13 states in the U.S. South plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.