Guest Blogger: James Johnston
Hunting for fire scars is a ton of fun. My favorite spots within the Youngs Rock-Rigdon planning area are those areas with oaks.
Oregon white oak (Quercus garryanna) is an amazing tree. It is relatively slow growing and usually can’t compete with Douglas-fir. It is extremely fire resistant because it has thick, protective bark and adventitious buds—buds that can quickly resprout following fire damage. Oak savannahs and woodlands are archetypal fire-dependent ecosystems. Historically, they burned very frequently which promoted dominance by oaks and excluded conifers that were not quite as well adapted to very frequent fire.
Many oak stands up the Middle Fork are kind of sad because younger Douglas-fir has over-topped the oak and killed it. Douglas-fir competes with the oak for water and light. White oak needs an enormous amount of light—usually light from all directions—in order to survive and grow new leaves every year. These oaks (right) died just within the last year or two.
Right next to these dead oaks was a ponderosa pine stump (at 43 29.576, -122 23.091) that was an incredible source of data. It had rings from when it was cut down in 1956 to the year 1344 (in that same year, at the Siege of Algeciras in Spain, a European army used gunpowder for the first time). And it recorded fires in 1849, 1842, 1839, 1833, 1829, 1826, 1822, 1818, 1815, 1805, 1792, 1790, 1788, 1783, 1781, 1779, 1775, 1768, 1763, 1754, 1744, 1739, and 1728. As far as I know, this site experienced more frequent historical fire than any site where fire has been reconstructed in the Pacific Northwest.
