2022 Prescribed Fire Season Reintroduces Fire to Landscape

A prescribed burn in progress at Reflection Riding in early 2022.

Prescribed fire season at Reflection Riding has been a huge success so far!

The 2022 spring prescribed fire season at Reflection Riding has been a huge success! So far, we have reintroduced fire to the landscape on four different prescription burn areas. Prescribed fires can be helpful for many reasons, including the removal of unwanted species that threaten species native to an ecosystem. 

In February, the first area burned consisted of a mixture of fuels that primarily included grass and oak leaf litter. This area, known as the Pavilion Unit, is located near the Pinetum, an area with planted pine trees, and next to our Pavilion.  This burn served as a training and orientation opportunity for the Native Landscape Apprentices.

Sheet Sward and Jump Field are two additional areas that were burned for the first time this year! Each of these spaces were covered in invasive tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea). Using prescribed fires as a management tool will help these areas recover into grasslands with a mosaic of warm-season native grasses and forbs. During the burn, particular attention was given to the edges of these openings with the woods immediately adjacent. Edge habitat is extremely valuable for native wildlife, and often the first place that woody exotic plants, such as Chinese privet, Ligustrum sinense, start to invade.  

The fourth prescribed burn unit encompasses the area between our upper and lower gravel roads, which surrounds the Philp Memorial Azalea Garden. This is a wood unit with lots of pine trees. The gravel roads make for excellent firebreaks, and the Native Landscape Apprentices constructed hand lines, which is a fireline built with hand tools. These practices provided protection for the Philp Garden and any standing dead trees or other hazards inside the burn unit. The shortleaf pines (Pinus echinata) here are a fire-adapted species and they will benefit from the reintroduction of fire.

Burn season closes later this spring on May 1. We are hopeful that the weather will be favorable and will allow for more opportunities to burn in our prescribed areas. The next unit stated to burn is the entire Pinetum, an arboretum of pine trees, located between Cherokee Rock and the Philp Garden.  In the past five years, this grassland has had two spring burns in its southern end and the native grasses there have responded nicely. Our goal is to encourage the north end of the unit to have the same results. Additionally, a plan is in place to conduct cut stump treatments on encroaching woody vegetation and other exotics located there this summer. 

To learn more about the use of prescribed fires and their history, check our Byron’s blog from earlier this spring here.