INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF PRESCRIBED FIRE IN THE FLORIDA DIVISION OF FORESTRY: LESSONS FROM THE PAST, DIRECTIONS FOR THE FUTURE.

As landscapes are protected for conservation through public ownership or by agreement, there may be some benefit to the study of how public land managing agencies address questions and concerns about increasing prescribed fire responsibilities. The Florida Division of Forestry began managing public land in 1934. With the advent of Florida's active conservation land acquisition programs in 1980s, the state forest system more than tripled in size. Extant historical prescribed fire data at the state forest level includes acres planned and accomplished and acres of wildfire for each year since 1982. A recent effort to map potential natural vegetation on the state forests suggests that about 70% of these acres should be managed with prescribed fire to achieve desired future conditions. Consideration of preferred fire return intervals in various upland ecosystem types suggests that expected prescribed fire goals for 2007 should be between 189,606 acres (76,731 ha) and 485,398 acres (196,434 ha), up from between 70,896 acres (28,691 ha) and 198,599 acres (80,370 ha) in 1982. This rapid increase in prescribed fire responsibility brings many operational, logistical, and social challenges to a public conservation institution. Prescribed burning is shifting from the use of traditional, more experiential methods to those more characteristic of adaptive management. Internal reviews have been successfully used to promote communication and cooperation among multifunctional staff and to address such issues as accountability, tree mortality, training, equipment usage, planning, and post-burn evaluations. Examination of longterm trends at the unit and institutional level are critical to determining the effectiveness of prescribed fire programs. The long-term data show that, with the cessation of private management following public land acquisition, there is a variable lag time until staffing and planning levels reach the point where prescribed burning can resume; a time during which fuels continue to accumulate. This lag time may also be due to other reasons, including the fire management history under the previous owner. Analysis of these data show where particular units need to increase planning goals, where underperforming units are more susceptible to wildfire, and where overall accomplishments can be increased by increasing the area burned in certain months. The movement of highly motivated individuals within the system has a significant impact on accomplishment of prescribed fire objectives. Historical data at these levels have been used to develop institutional policies that have begun to increase the level of planning and accomplishments, and decrease the lag time for new properties. The next steps of assessing our initial post-burn evaluation project and of developing stand-specific desired future conditions, objectives, and prescriptions will help to continue this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference Proceedings is the property of Tall Timbers Research Station and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)