You guys know alabama natural history better than I do, but how likely was "natural" fire really a dominating cause on the landscape?
itThe research Ive seen has always emphasized human atrributed fires as being the overwhelming source.
One of my pet peaves is the reference to the "natural system" as somehow being from the pin point of settlers establishing homesteads. That leaves out that natives had been largely removed from the landscape for 200+ years. The large Mississipian Culture and peoples probably had a pretty big impact on fire regimes.
Skinny probably knows the population #s and impacts on natural communities.
One we would all like to know the answer to! Undoubtedly indigenous fires had as much, or more, impact on how and when the woods burned. I don't know of a lot of definitive data on native set fire seasonality (not much besides speculation on lightning set fires either).
Here is one:
A history of recurrent, low-severity fire without fire exclusion in southeastern pine savannas, USA
Monica T.Rothera, Jean M.Huffmanb, Christopher H.Guiterman, Kevin M.Robertson, Neil Jones
"Both fire frequency and seasonality were relatively consistent throughout time and among sites. Biennial and annual fire intervals were the most common. Most fire scars occurred in the dormant and early-earlywood portions of the rings, indicating that these fires were human-set fires during the months of January to mid-April, before the main lightning-fire season."
An article in "Global Application of Prescribed Fire" titled "Fire in Pines in the Southeastern US" published this year by Miller and Corby states "Lightning strikes early in the growing season are significantly more likely to start fires, and those fires are statistically more likely to burn more acres."
