“What about the smoke?”
“What about the smoke?”
By Kevin Robertson, Fire Ecology Program Director
During Prescribe Fire Awareness Week (January 22-28 in Florida and February 5-11 in Georgia) and indeed throughout the year, Tall Timbers, the prescribed fire councils in Florida and Georgia, the Florida Forest Service and the Georgia Forestry Commission promote the use of prescribed fire as a safe way to apply a natural process, ensure ecosystem health and reduce wildfire risk. But there is no question, that where there is fire, there is smoke. As we are in a region with large tracts of plantation lands and state and federal forest lands, where prescribed burns are regularly conducted, the resultant smoke and air quality is of concern to many.
Needless to say, breathing smoke is not good for you. However, one of the important goals of prescribed burning is to reduce fuel loads on the landscape so we do not experience large and difficult to control wildfires; these usually produce many times the smoke of a prescribed burn and can have very serious health impacts on the community. In contrast, prescribed burns are generally frequent enough to produce relatively small amounts of smoke, and we choose the conditions, including wind directions away from roads and highly populated areas, and atmospheric stability conditions in which smoke rises quickly and is readily dispersed.
Prescribed burn conducted on the Kate Ireland Parkway in Leon County, FL during Prescribed Fire Awareness Week in 2011.
Although we cannot promise that everyone out there is doing everything just as they should, prescribed fire education and training is always making headway, and prescribed burners continue to get better skilled at reducing impacts to the community. In any case, although we might smell a strong whiff of smoke when someone is burning nearby, the fact is, only a very small percentage (<1%) of the particulate matter (small particles that impact our lungs) in the air that we breath over the course of the year comes from smoke from burning, the great majority of it coming from coal power plants and cars, especially in urban areas.
The amount of smoke in the air is also monitored and regulated. To conduct a prescribed burn, an authorization has to be obtained from the Florida Forest Service (previously Division of Forestry) or the Georgia Forestry Commission, usually the morning of the burn. It is their job to determine whether or not there is already too much burning (or wildfire) going on in a certain area to authorize additional burns. Also, prescribed fires are typically required to be extinguished and mopped up by 5:00 PM to avoid that night time smoke. Again, that does not mean that everyone out there always follows the rules, but they risk stiff penalties if they break them. Finally, there are federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations for levels of particulate matter that are allowable in the air on a daily and yearly basis. The state air quality agency has to monitor and make sure that all parts of Florida are "in attainment" of the regulations, and otherwise some sources of pollution have to be shut down, and prescribed fire is the easiest target. The state forestry agency has stay within requirements of the air quality agencies by limiting the amount of smoke released by burning through the burn authorization system. The EPA regulations are actually pretty strict and getting stricter, but Florida’s air quality has continued to improve over time to stay in attainment, with very rare exceptions, and those usually attributable to wildfires.
Unfortunately, sometimes smoke is incorrectly attributed to prescribed fires, when in fact it is from a nearby wildfire. Several times last year I heard on the local radio that smoke in Tallahassee was from a prescribed burn, right in the middle of a burn ban when no one was allowed to burn, and when I called the Florida Forest Service they confirmed it was from a wildfire.
Prescribed burning brings back to our landscape only a fraction of the fire that occurred historically. Some people wonder if lightning strikes were really common enough to maintain frequent fires. In fact, lightning struck and started fires often enough to start fires usually every 1-3 years. However, now with roads, development, and land uses that are not as flammable as the pine grasslands that once covered the area, not as many lightning strikes start fires and those fires are usually easy to contain and put out quickly. However, lightning strikes are still responsible for upwards of half the wildfires in Florida, which is one of the reasons prescribed fire is so important.
With the extraordinarily warm winter, early spring bobwhites have begun pairing and nest building nearly a month earlier than usual. While the warm weather was not ideal for hunting, it did help with overwinter survival of quail. Our hawk counts over a 10-mile survey route were low this entire winter, and have remained about 20% of last year’s counts over the past several months. With low cotton rat numbers this year, few red-tailed hawks were in the region. The warm weather and few cold fronts appeared to keep migratory Cooper’s hawk numbers relatively low as well. Low disturbance and predation by hawks and owls reduces stress on the birds caused by predation and harassment from hawks. In addition, the recent rainfall has helped habitat recover quickly following early burning, and ragweed fields are growing rapidly providing early habitat. When overwinter survival is high, habitat is good, and densities are relatively low, quail tend to nest vigorously. Over the past 15 years, we have had very few nests incubated during April, but this March, we have already flushed pairs from perfectly formed nest bowls. Our hatch is off to a good start.
For instance, thanks to our endowment, we are able to begin new research to better understand what factors affect bobwhite chick survival on a daily basis. This groundbreaking work will identify what management can be done to offset the causes of chick mortality. Chick ecology remains one of the last pressing issues in bobwhite management that is still largely a “black box”. We know how many are hatched, and how many survive until the next spring, but what happens in between is unknown. It is important to find management solutions to low chick survival, because the majority of quail population declines are the result of below average chick survival. Improving survival, even 25%, would have huge implications for quail populations. We are excited about the potential for new research at Tall Timbers to provide innovative management ideas and help keep the Red Hills and Albany the best quail hunting areas in the world! Thank you to all that provided contributions and pledges to the Endowment Campaign for Game Bird Program research!
The Florida Grasshopper Sparrow occurs in the wide open prairie lands of central Florida. These flat, treeless expanses occur exclusively in Florida and support a tremendous diversity of rare plants as well endemic Florida grasshopper sparrow. Fire is a key process — occurring approximately every 1-2 years — and the lab is gathering preliminary background information on one sparrow population that will be used to develop studies on the effects that different fire regimes may have.
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With support from the Bahamas National Trust, the Bird Lab will be taking mist nets and banding equipment to the Bahamas this summer to collect DNA samples from birds on Grand Bahamas Island and to develop better estimates for the size and health of the population. The DNA samples are essential for answering long-standing questions about the uniqueness of this population — several authorities list this nuthatch as a distinct species because of its long-term isolation from mainland populations and morphological and behavioral differences. The DNA samples will be compared to samples the Bird Lab and University of Florida have collected from dozens of mainland populations (including the Red Hills region) as well as the Pygmy Nuthatch, a sibling species that occurs in pinewoods in the western U.S.
