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Burning the best prescription for healthy mountain top
By Cynthia B. Coleman • Staff Writer
 | | Within seconds after being ignited by a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel, the flames roar through a stand of Mountain Laurel, which has in its leaves an oily substance that also fuels the fire. The laurels' tops will burn and the plant will die to the ground, though the root system will send up new shoots; by next summer the shrubs will be green and more compact. (Recorder photo by Cynthia B. Coleman) |
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WARM SPRINGS - We have grown up learning about Smokey Bear and his stern message, "Only you can prevent forest fires." While wildfiresare dangerous to people and wildlife - a prescribed burn by professionals with a clear purpose, however, is necessary to prevent them. The new slogan today is "OUC," which still stands for "Only You Can" prevent forest fires.
Mare Run on Warm Springs Mountain underwent a prescribed burn Tuesday, starting around 10 a.m. The burn was a joint effort of The Nature Conservancy, which owns the land, and the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest, overseen by the Warm Springs Ranger District. Another 143 acres was burned Wednesday in the Bear Loop area.
 | | The helicopter as it flies over the burn site to drop the plastic spheres, igniting terrain too tough to reach by the firefighters. |
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TNC and the forest service entered into a cooperative agreement several years ago to maintain adjoining lands. "We help them with their burns," said Sharon Mohney, forest service information officer,"and they help us with ours. With some of them we have to cooperate as ours are particularly downhill in elevation from theirs ... working with them allows both of us to get a lot more done … and done with no cost to each other."
The TNC section that was burned Tuesday bordered the national forest on the eastern side of Warm Springs Mountain near the Dan Ingalls Overlook off Route 39. The section extends from Route 39 and across the top of the mountain. The burn of 875 acres was the first prescribed burn on Warm Springs Mountain.
The Homestead Skyline Drive served as the fireline or firebreak for the burn. A fireline is a section that has already been burned or a road with little or no fuel on it. The steep mountain slopes on the national forest land prevent making firelines, hence the coordination with TNC on the burn this week.
 | | Sharon Mohney (l) and Steve Smestad (r) read the prescribed burn incident and topographical map that pinpoints all check point references for the various firefighters. |
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A prescribed burn has a specific purpose, no matter how devastating the area looks afterward. The purpose is to maintain or restore wildlife habitats, ecosystems, endangered or threatened species, and healthy, safe forested landscapes. The prime burn objective is to maintain firefightersafety at all times.
Tuesday's burn had three other objectives specific to the area - topkill 60 to 70 percent of maples and gum trees under 12 feet tall; consume 50 percent of the area's surface litter (leaves, twigs, branches and rotted trunks); and topkill 20 percent of the shrub layer, especially that of mountain laurel and rhododendron.
"Fuel reduction is a primary reason for a prescribed burn," said Mohney, "but it is also a ecosystem management system tool … Oaks do best if their seedlings are burned a few times."
 | | Pat Sheridan leans partway out of the helicopter, his legs straddling the plastic sphere dispenser, which dispensed 3,500 spheres Tuesday. (Recorder photos by Cynthia B. Coleman) |
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When oak saplings are burned their root systems still develop and grow large. Removing the
overstory above allows them to respond quickly and grow rapidly.
As oaks grow, deer browse them, preventing a large growth season. With a prescribed burn and the large root system, the oaks can grow out of reach of the deer and then one day replace the overstory, the older oaks surrounding them.
Tim SanJule from TNC's Charlottesville officesaid, "When you look at this forest canopy, it's predominately oak. But if you look at the understory, you'll findthere's next to nothing of oak. So our children and grandchildren will be faced with a forest that is mostly maple, unless we put fireon the ground." A forest of more maples rather than oaks provides little mast or food for wildlife.
Many pines in the Alleghany Mountains need fireto open the cones, which are covered in thick, hard layers of sap. "They won't open," said Mohney, "unless the stuff is heated up enough to release the seeds."
Other pines need a burnt surface for their seeds to take root. "If they land amongst leaves, there's nothing to take root on. They need mineral soil and the moisture associated with that," she said.
A prescribed burn is set in several ways. Specially trained firefighters, from TNC and the forest service, set fires as they walk along the firelines using a "drip torch," a canister filled with a mixture of gasoline and diesel fuel. While a large wildfire,as in a lightning strike, is preferred, the torch helps to start spot fires along the fireline.
Fires are termed as being "flank" when they run along the road rather than up or down into the center of the burn area; a flanking fireis much cooler. A head fireis hotter and will run fast into a burn area with the right amount of heat to serve the planned objectives, especially to kill off undesired species, while preserving larger, desirable ones.
To fillin between the firelines, a helicopter is employed, as was Tuesday. Helo-Air out of Richmond supplied the helicopter, piloted by Rob Roberts and a crew of four. Ranger Pat Sheridan of the Warm Springs Ranger District was the air ignition boss, overseeing the system of forest floor ignition from the air. The system, nicknamed "the Pluto machine," shoots out balls that strike forest floor, igniting it. Since the forest floor is often matted down, in the spring, with the litter of the previous fall and winter and trappedin moisture, it is difficultto ignite. The Pluto machine is designed to penetrate through the thick, damp layers.
The machine's officialname is the plastic sphere dispenser; the balls are the plastic spheres, and are slightly smaller than a ping-pong ball. The spheres are filled with a chemical mixture of ethylene glycol (or anti-freeze) and potassium permanganate. The dispenser shoots the spheres out every 10 to 20 seconds. The chemicals and the impact cause the spheres to ignite. Sheridan was Tuesday's Pluto operator and 3,500 spheres were released.
Another burn member was Phil Manuel, incident meteorologist from Virginia Tech. A meteorologist is employed ensure the weather conditions are the best possible for a prescribed burn, especially one covering more than 800 acres. Firefighterswant the weather condition to be such that the smoke rises high enough to disperse over a large area, rather than to settle into the valleys below.
When spotty rain began to fall Tuesday afternoon, Manuel was questioned as most there thought none was forecasted. He told the firefightersthat while there had been a 20 percent chance of rain, but he had not expected the front to move in so quickly. The cloud cover was not the best of conditions for wide dispersal of smoke.
School board chairman Paul Ryder, at Tuesday night's school board meeting, said the smoke went as far as Buena Vista in Rockbridge County where he had spent the day.
Over the next several years, prescribed burns will occur in 11 sites in the Warm Springs Mountain Restoration Project: South Smith Creek, North Smith Creek, Big Wilson, Blue Grass, Porters Mill, Brushy Ridge, Panthers Run, Middle Mountain, Mare Run, Bear Loop and Bald Knob for a total of 18,424 acres. Mare Run and Bear Loop were completed this week and end the prescribed burns for this season.
"By this time next summer," Mohney said, "visitors to this area will not be able to tell there has been a burn." Unless a person knows where to look or closely examines a trunk that was deeply singed, the Mare Run area on top of Warm Springs Mountain will return to its beautiful lush, green nature and future generations will see a forest with a variety of trees only the Native Americans and early settlers saw.
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