By Bill Kleiman

On November 17, 2023 Middle Rock Conservation Partners burned their Samuel and Edna Hill Site. This photo shows good ecological fire, with a slow backburn consuming oak leaf litter and some dried plants from the previous few years. The shrubs there are all invasive honeysuckle. The heat of the fire will top kill most of those shrubs. The shrubs will re-sprout from the roots and after several years be big enough to produce flowers and then seeds. In those intervening years the increased sunlight supports the growth of flowers, grasses, and sedges. Hopefully, the crew returns in a few years to burn this woods again.

The thick bark of this bur oak is not effected by the modest heat of this fire. Although a really old oak with a rotted center can sometimes get a chimney fire going and damage the tree. Bur oak regeneration requires sunlight which comes with repeated use of fire, and in a restoration phase selective thinning of non-oak trees and shrubs.

Kaleb Baker, Pete Oliver with crew boss Phil Nagorny. Behind them at the bottom I can see how Kaleb walked in a wandering circle with the drip torch to get that bottom burning. Behind Kaleb the fire is moving more vigorously up a north facing slope. The winds were northwest.

The down wind smoke column rose slowly as the fire reached peak burning. The wind direction was chosen to be away from the adjacent highway.

Near the end of the day, burn boss Damian Considine leads an after action review to share lessons learned and discuss tasks for the end of the day. Some logging equipment of Grover Tree is seen on the left. Grover has helped thin some of the trees that were crowding the oak and hickory on this site, mostly cedar, cherry, box elder and elm.

This is the second prescribed fire at this site, which the group purchased four years ago. You can find other posts about this site:

https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2023/11/09/the-power-and-limits-of-photo-monitoring/https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2022/12/08/photo-monitoring-results/https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2020/04/12/brush-mowing-2/https://grasslandrestorationnetwork.org/2020/02/07/scaling-up-to-mow-brush/