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Looking at photos depicting vast areas of the Bastrop State Park pines charred to the ground and covered in a white ash evoked sadness, as well as green scented images from long hikes through the pines over my last 40+ years in central Texas. Are the pines gone? Is Bastrop State Park changed forever?
From an ecologist’s perspective the answer is inevitably more complex. A look to the future gives more hope.
Bastrop State Park as a biological resource has always been much more than just the beautiful pines. It is also a very large area populated with hundreds of other plant species associated with the pine forest/savanna. It has been protected from most development and has a relatively low percentage of invasive exotic species that plague so much of the surrounding farm and grazing land. In the sunny openings between the trees, these assemblages of grasses and forbs have formed little pocket prairies, historically dominant in parts of Central Texas but now mostly gone, replaced by agricultural and “garden center” plants.
Along the parks’ power line easements, trees have been routinely removed and cut with machines, effectively replacing fire, but without leaving the nutritious ash. Still, this has created a beautiful native prairie, flourishing with many wildflowers such as several Liatris species, rattlesnake master, false aloe, and many more. A diverse collection of native grasses such as little bluestem, indian grass, dropseeds, etc. also flourish.
A viable seed bank of these sun loving native species remains in the soil where, until recently, there were mostly pines, oaks and an understory dominated by yaupon. There is little seed of exotic species in the former deep woods to compete with and slow the development of the natural prairie that is dormant now, but waiting its turn after fire, ash, and eventual rain. And, yes, when the rains come there will also be little pine seedlings poking through the ash, ready to give the pine forest stage of succession another chance in its turn. The oaks, even though killed above ground, will resprout from their extensive live root systems, creating oak groves and shading out the pine seedlings and prairie species in some places.
The small areas of large pines which have survived this fire will be set within large swaths of prairie, becoming iconic cathedrals reminding us of what was and what will be again. We will learn to treasure them even more as we learn to appreciate the beautiful open fields of flowers and grasses in what will potentially become the largest natural prairie habitat in Central Texas.
This magnificent prairie will be a treasure in its own right. It will be a tremendous resource for researchers to learn details about the nature of plant succession in this habitat. As the pines slowly return, perhaps dominate, and then slowly get pushed aside by the hardwoods, researchers will be able to see the ecological effects from how future fires are managed. This area also has the potential to be utilized as a resource for seed of prairie species which are uncommon or reduced in this state. This could be a tremendous asset for habitat restoration of prairies and savannahs in similar soils in Central Texas. It will be very important to resist any misguided calls to reseed this area with species that are not native to this habitat, or worse, with invasive exotics. It is important to support and fund the people who will have lots of good restoration work to do in the months and years to come.
Worldwide, pine habitats are fire dynamic communities, that is, they are shaped and somewhat dependent on natural fires, resetting the biological clocks affecting plant succession (the slow change of a plant community over time). A pine forest is often an early post-fire stage which sprouts in the sunlit ground created by fire, and which in turn is eventually shaded out by hardwoods that regenerate under the shade of a pine forest.
In some instances pine communities historically tend to form a savanna habitat, an “neighborhood park” like scene of scattered trees with sunny openings, and with a grassland understory encouraged by the sunlight. A savanna occurs when there are frequent enough fires to reduce the low woody growth sufficiently so that when a fire burns through there is less tall fuel in the understory and the fire is less likely to “crown” into the taller trees and kill them. The U.S. has a long history of fire suppression (Remember Smokey the Bear?) which has resulted in many wooded habitats. These habitats had previously been maintained in more open conditions by more frequent fires. They’ve since become much more susceptible to “catastrophic fires” which are much more drastic in their effect on a habitat than regular, frequent fires.
Over recent decades the attempt at total suppression of natural fires became understood by most natural area managers as a mistake which was having severe consequences for fire dependent species and habitats, as well as for public safety. A shift is now being made to allow more frequent fires, or intentionally initiating controlled burns to gradually recover the lost habitat and reduce the high fuel loads. Interestingly, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has recently been using controlled winter burns in some larger areas of Bastrop State Park to reduce the huge fuel loads in part of the park and these areas were starting to regain a more neighborhood park-like openness. It will be interesting to see how these areas fared in this huge fire compared to the untreated areas, although the many fire variables such as wind speeds, time of day/night when the fire went through, etc, will make interpretation difficult.
Two years ago I drove and hiked through the areas “devastated” by the large-scale conflagrations which scorched about a third of Yellowstone National Park in 1988, and I can assure you that the land is doing quite well. There is a wonderful mix of habitats with plant communities in all stages of succession. And yes, the lodgepole pines are back in the burned areas, sprouting from the seeds of the serotinous cones, released after the intense heat cracked the resin sealing the cones.
Now we will get to watch the plant communities in Bastrop rise through the ashes.
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**ARCHIVED POST AUTHOR: mahler
