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Oddly, fire is good for the forest
Seeing the pictures of a wild fire like that burning along the Gunflint Trail this week, it might seem like we are watching the death of a forest. In fact, DNR Forest Ecologist Kurt Rusterholz says we are witnessing its rebirth. "The forests are born of fire, they're shaped by fires and the species composition is affected by fire." Rusterholz says fire plays midwife to the big woods. "Jack Pine holds its seeds up in the canopy. The Jack Pines that are burning right now up on the Gunflint, have cones that are generally closed and they open up following heat of a fire and over the next few weeks, those cones are going to be dropping onto the burn site and regenerating." The size of Mother Nature's "do over" on the Gunflint Trail amazes. At 86 square miles and counting, the fire is now bigger than the cities of Minneapolis and Bloomington combined. The University of Minnesota's Director of the Center for Hardwood Ecology Lee Frelich was camping in the BWCA when the fire began. He was actually trapped by the blaze for two days last weekend. "And I did notice when I was being escorted out of the burned area Monday morning that the fire did open the cones and so those cones are falling on the forest floor as we speak." It may be small comfort to someone losing their home or business, but time will restore nature. Rusterholz visited the Cavity Lake fire site in September of 2006, a little more than a month after that blaze was confined. His snapshots show explosions of green vegetation against the burned out backdrop of the fire scene. He says there have been bigger fires than Ham Lake and the forest has always comes back. "There are some areas on Seagull Lake that burned in the 70's that now have a nice young forest of dense Jack Pine." Lee Frelich offers one caveat. "The only thing I'm concerned about is the drought. If the drought continues and the seedlings germinate and they don't have any water, they might die. We do need rain, both to put out the fire and to ensure that the seedlings will grow after the fire." Odd as it seems, fire equals forest.
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