The Wayne National Forest (WNF) is located in the hills of southeastern Ohio. This small national forest, in the heart of the heavily populated Midwest, covers almost a quarter million acres of Appalachian foothills. The Wayne is divided into three blocks administered by two Ranger Districts at Athens and Ironton.
The Forest boundaries surround a checkerboard pattern of ownership, with public and private ownership interspersed.
The SCA is proud to expand the Wildland Fire program to include Wayne National Forest. As the first year serving in the region, 2 SCA crews consisting of 4 team members and 1 project leader will be collecting FIREMON data in the Athens and Ironton Districts. Once merged with past data, WNF will have a better understanding of the effects of fire on the ecosystem.
Forests in southeastern Ohio have changed dramatically in their structure and are starting to shift in species composition. Forest productivity has been degraded, land has become fragmented and average parcel size reduced. Fire on the landscape has become infrequent starting in the early 1930’s when fire control laws were passed and general protection of the forest ecosystem began. In southeastern Ohio, dominant forest taxa are occupying similar environmental sites today as they did in the pre-settlement forest, but relative abundances have changed significantly (Dyer, 2001).
In addition to a decrease in the dominant oaks and hickories with an increase of more shade tolerant species such as sugar maple, a second evident trend is a dramatic increase in early successional species such as yellow poplar, ash, pine, aspen, and black cherry (Dyer, 2001). One of the dominate canopy species, the American chestnut, has been extirpated except for some remaining stump sprouts, and the historic pine component of these systems has been largely lost.
The Wayne 2006 Forest Plan emphasizes wildlife habitat and oak-hickory ecosystem restoration. Prescribed fire is an important tool in oak-hickory restoration. The Wayne is working to document the current condition of its forest systems to understand what is most out of alignment and how far away systems are from the desired future condition described in the Forest Plan. We are also working to document the effects of prescribed fire in southeastern Ohio in an attempt to get a better understanding of what results can be obtained under different forest stand conditions. Using an adaptive management framework, information will be organized and used to refine a set of prescriptions that will help guide restoration in the future.