Legendary Lake States fires burned slashy cutover land, not virgin forest.
Evidence
It is useful to consider the possible weather and climatic factors associated with past fires in the Canoe Area’s virgin forests because these fires burned intact natural stands. In contrast, the historic fires of the Lake States, about which so many accounts have been written, burned largely on cutover land carrying logging slash, or even encompassed some open hay land. This was the case, for example, with the great Peshtigo, Hickley, Baudette, and Cloquet-Moose Lake fires discussed by Haines and Sando (1969). Both the behavior and the ecological effects of such slash fires may greatly differ from those in virgin forests because of differences in fuels and in tree seed supplies following the burn. — Miron L. Heinselman, Fire in the Virgin Forests of the…, 165
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Logging-era slash fires replaced red and white pine with aspen, birch, and jack pine — Miron L. Heinselman, Fire in the Virgin Forests of the…, 63