Fire in North American Wetland Ecosystems and Fire-Wildlife Relations: An Annotated Bibliography

84. Garren, K H. 1943. Effects of fire on vegetation of the southeastern United 
         States. Bot. Rev. 9:617-654.

Fire is as important an agent as climate and soil in determining the persistence of vegetation types in many parts of the Southeast. The effects of fire are reviewed for longleaf-slash pine, coastal plain and bottomland hardwoods, coastal plain swamp, and other upland forests as well as natural or artificial unforested areas. Regarding wetlands and fire, it is noted that pocosins can regenerate after wet season fires, but that otherwise there are various successional changes. Cypress swamps sometimes are little affected by fire. At other times, they change to shrubs. There are instances of cypress-tupelo swamps forming in fire-protected longleaf pine areas. Atlantic white-cedar swamps usually are completely destroyed by fire. Only if enough seed remains will the type regenerate. Regeneration, if it occurs, results in an extremely dense stand. In Louisiana, fire sets back succession of coastal marsh, and revegetation is retarded because of excessive leaching of ashes. The season of burning affects the impact of fire on coastal and swamp marshes. Fire appears responsible for the origin and maintenance of most southeastern grass-sedge bogs or "savannahs." [K-L-S]