Prescribed Burns

Prescribed burns are issued during early to mid-spring, before frequent, heavy winds. This helps prevent future wildfires by burning debris, including dead plants and even healthy ones. It also helps with growth regeneration and allows new vegetative growth. This quickly, when all the brush is turned into ash rather than yellow leaves and pine needles.

Inkberries bushes are burnt but remain

Gold and red burnt inkberries

New growth after prescribed burn

Although the inkberry bushes are not disintegrated altogether, they can go from a lush green to a burnt orange, gold, brown, or red after a prescribed burn. Watch how, around the burnt area, the grasses begin to sprout, adding new life as a result of the controlled burning.

Untouched side with healthy inkberries

Burnt side on the left and untouched on the right

Burnt area

Yellow Pine Needles

Yellow pine needles mix in with untouched trees and green needles. The bottom layer receives the burn. Inkberry plants remain but turn gold and brown from the fire. New grasses begin to grow as early as April following a prescribed burn on the flat ground.

Edge of yellow burnt woods

Burnt dense forest

Yellow burnt pitch pine

Nearby Area

Near the burnt area is a ghost forest of cedars. Although near some of the burnt areas, cedar forests do not typically receive prescribed burns.

Daytime ghost cedar forest

Few trees collapse

Healthy and dead cedar mix