Ohio Hills Fire and Fire Surrogate Study: vegetation, fuels, and fire behavior

This data publication contains summarized vegetation, fuels, and fire behavior data for the Ohio Hills site of the National Fire and Fire Surrogates Study. This study is in the Southern Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau Section in southeastern Ohio. Treatments at three study sites (blocks) were control (Cont, no active treatment), mechanical partial harvest (Mech), repeated prescribed fires (Fire), and the combination of mechanical partial harvest and repeated prescribed fires (Mech + Fire). For vegetation (overstory, midstory, large tree regeneration, groundlayer), data include pre-treatment values in 2000 as well as post-treatment values in 2017 (groundlayer) and 2021 (overstory, midstory, large tree regeneration). Post-treatment fuels data were collected in 2016. Fire behavior estimates in burn units were averaged across four prescribed fires in 2001, 2005, 2010, and 2016.
The objectives of the national study were to determine the effectiveness of fire and fire surrogate (i.e., mechanical thinning) treatments, alone and in combination, to create more open-structured, resilient, and sustainable conditions, and to reduce fire risk. At Ohio Hills, a primary objective was to reverse the process of mesophication which would be characterized by a suite of changes including reduced dominance of mesophytic trees beneath the canopy, an increase in the abundance of large oak-hickory advance regeneration, fuel beds more conducive to prescribed fire, and a more diverse and productive groundlayer flora. In addition, we sought to examine whether treatments reduced the risk of high-severity fire through fuel reduction.
For more information about this study and these data, see Hutchinson et al. (in press).