FIRE ECOLOGY
SPECIES: Picea rubens | Red Spruce 



FIRE ECOLOGY OR ADAPTATIONS : 
Red spruce forests persist without fire.  Red spruce is easily killed by
fire due to its thin bark, shallow roots, flammable needles, and lack of
self-pruning [9,23,39].  Its slow early growth rate delays the formation
of a corky layer, which increases the fire susceptibility of young trees
[39].  In a study based on a survey of foresters, Starker [76] rated the
fire resistance of 22 New England tree species based on fire mortality
and fire avoidance (occurrence in habitat that does not burn very
often).  Red spruce was not resistant in terms o fire mortality but
moderately or very resistant in terms of fire avoidance, and was ranked
13th overall.

Red spruce habitat is subject to few fires; fires that occurred in
presettlement times were usually of low severity [1].  Saunders [73]
noted that old-timers claimed that forest fires would stop when they
reached the spruce-fir forest boundary.  Electrical storms are common in
this area but are usually accompanied by sufficient rain, and fuels are
usually moist [32].  Severe surface fires probably occurred
infrequently, during periods of prolonged drought, and usually affected
forests that were breaking up due to wind, ice storm damage, or similar
events that generate surface fuels [25,32,60,61,87].

The estimated natural fire return intervals for the northeastern United
States and adjacent Canada range from 330 to 3,300 or more years
[25,32,51,52,84].  Estimates of natural fire frequency have been
complicated by human activities.  Logging in these forests has resulted
in an increase in fire frequency and intensity, particularly in logging
slash [18,32,52].  The catastrophic fires of the 19th and 20th centuries
can be attributed to human activities [21,32,52].  However, even with
the increase in fires due to human activity, most fires are small and
quickly suppressed.  There should be sufficient time between fires for
red spruce to regain dominance on most sites unless deliberately and/or
repeatedly burned.

It has been suggested that, in presettlement forests, the increase of
dead fuels following spruce budworm outbreaks increased the likelihood
of fire [21,25,32].  Such outbreaks are more common in
balsam-fir-dominated forests than in red-spruce-dominated forests, but
the two species usually occur together, in varying proportions.

Before settlement by Europeans, forests in northern New England, the
Adirondack Mountains, and the hillier sections of southern New England
and Pennsylvania were not deliberately burned by Native Americans as
were other areas in the northeastern United States [18].


POSTFIRE REGENERATION STRATEGY : 
   Tree without adventitious-bud root crown
   Secondary colonizer - off-site seed

Related categories for Species: Picea rubens | Red Spruce