182 This restoration effort benefits from 60 years of close study of these ecosystems at Tall Timbers in the panhandle of Florida. At Tall Timbers, prescribed fire has been one of the key tactics in returning vigor and biodiversity to native ecosystems. Tall Timbers manages a series of research plots and more than 13,000 acres. Some plots are burned every year, others every four or five. Some have never been burned, and some are burned in different seasons. Kevin Robertson, fire ecology research scientist at Tall Timbers, is part of an extended team that applies GIS technology to capture details of the organization’s natural resources research. They use GIS mapping and spatial analysis tools to plan fire research that links the amount of fuel (live and dead plants) in the ecosystem, weather conditions, and fire behavior. After each fire, Robertson and his team use GIS to record the impacts to wildlife and plants. “We never have a research plot without it being in GIS. Putting together details about the trees and fire alongside the topographic location, the soil type, the plant community, and the climate has led to important discoveries.” — Kevin Robertson, fire ecology research scientist, Tall Timbers Scientific Approach to Capture Change and Causes Tall Timbers, located in Northern Leon County, Florida, started out as a quail hunting estate established in 1895 by wealthy New York City architect, Edward Beadel. His nephew Henry Beadel inherited the property and carried on the hunting tradition. When he saw quail populations decline by the early 1920s, he worked with other nearby landowners to sponsor a study to understand why. When the study emphasized the importance of fire, it led to Tall Timbers being known as the birthplace of fire ecology. When Henry Beadel died, he endowed his land at Tall Timbers as a research laboratory for further investigation into the value of prescribed fire and education about its benefits. In an old growth longleaf pine community known as the Wade Tract, Tall Timbers researchers and the project founder William Platt have mapped and studied more than 20,000 pines for more than 45 years. The trees have been mapped every few years to track the distribution, height, and health of every individual tree larger than two centimeters in diameter. After a burn, researchers use GPS units to collect location-specific data on how the fire has spread and how it is influenced by the pattern of trees. A more detailed GIS analysis of the Wade Tract examines how unburned patches are in the gaps between trees because there is lower pine needle fuel. The longleaf pine juveniles (blue dots) tend to occur in the unburned patches. Additionally, regeneration of juveniles often happens in areas where mature trees recently died (gray circles). (Screenshot courtesy of Tall Timbers)
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