Historic Fire Regimes and Resettlement Vegetation of Fort Benning, Georgia

The goal of this project was to develop GIS maps of the original fire regimes and vegetation of Fort Benning to provide a basis for land management decisions. Rather than mapping existing vegetation, the intent was to produce the best approximation of the natural vegetation that existed at time of first European settlement. This is the vegetation that dominated the landscape in 1827 and for some 6,000 years before. Understanding original vegetation is essential to restoring habitats and managing lands for perpetuation of rare species, natural vegetation communities, and for the full range of animal and plant species that depend upon them and upon fire for habitat. All the upland original vegetation of Fort Benning was in some way structured by fire or else confined to fire-refugial sites.

About 65% of rare native plants and animals in the South are in some way dependent upon fire to create or maintain their habitat. Since the installation contains a number of these species, along with remnants of longleaf pine and other examples of the natural fire communities of the region, the GIS layers can serve as base maps for guidance in restoring fire dependent species and wildlife habitats such as longleaf pine, oak woodland and savanna, canebrake, pocosin and the other natural vegetation communities and wildlife habitats originally present. A new mapping method using principles of landscape fire ecology was used to reconstruct presettlement fire frequency (Map 1) and presettlement vegetation (Map 2). This involved field sampling of the best remnant vegetation on each of the 48 soil series shown on the portions of the four county soil maps that cover Fort Benning; characterizing fire effects in each kind of vegetation on each soil series; mapping regional and local fire compartments; and identification of fire-frequency indicator species and fire-frequency indicator plant communities. Soil series from were then used as a starting point to put boundaries on vegetation types. Data collected during previous work at other sites in the mid-Atlantic region Survey, as well as some 468 study plots throughout the Southeast elsewhere, were used in interpreting vegetation. Descriptions then were prepared of the original vegetation types of the installation as they occurred on each soil series. Original fire frequency was inferred from different kinds of fire dependent species present that are known to occur under certain fire intervals, and from landscape factors such as fire compartment size, relation to natural firebreaks such as the Chattahoochee River and Upatoi Creek and to pathways for fire flow. Historical tree species and other information relating to vegetation and fire frequency was collected from the original Georgia Land Lottery of 1827 obtained from the Georgia State Archives. The resulting fire-frequency map, map of presettlement vegetation and new mapping method tested here are expected to have application throughout the South and in other landscapes where frequent fire was an important determinant of vegetation in presettlement times.

Forestry staff at Fort Benning have begun an exemplary program of management for restoring natural forest types, using natural processes such as fire. Using the maps as guides for habitat restoration, the installation should be able to establish management policies that will meet its national defense and timber management objectives while restoring natural fire regimes and maintaining examples of the full range of rich natural communities of plants and animals that it first encompassed.