Controlled burns contain conflagrations.

• Position: Forest Fires

The use of prescribed fire, or controlled burns, as a tool to reduce the risk of wildfires, restore and maintain forest health, and protect rare ecological communities in the region's forests has been supported by a National Forest Service study that has reconstructed thousands of years of fire history in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Researchers used radiocarbon analysis of 82 soil charcoal samples dating from 1977 to more than 4,000 years ago to reconstruct the fire history of a 25-acre site in the Nantahala National Forest.

"This is the first hard data showing that fires have occurred relatively frequently over much of the last 4,000 years and have played an important role in the health, composition, and structure of southern Appalachian forest ecosystem," states ecologist Norman L. Christensen Jr. "Prior to this study, people presumed fire had long played an important role, but tree rings were the only available tool to study it, and they allowed us to look back just a few hundred years."

Analysis of soil charcoal samples demonstrated that fires became more frequent about 1,000 years ago. This coincides with the appearance of Mississippian Tradition Native Americans, who used fire to clear underbrush and improve habitats for hunting. Fires became less frequent at the site about 250 years ago, following the demise of the Mississippian people and the arrival of European settlers, whose preferred tools for clearing land were the axe and saw, rather than the use of fire. Active fire suppression policies and increased landscape fragmentation during the lest 75 years have reduced fire frequency further in the region, a trend reflected in the analysis of samples from the study site.

The relative absence of fire over the pest 250 years has altered forest composition and structure...