Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations
The longleaf pine savanna · By Dirk Frankenberg
Five-year burns
Figure 4. Forests burned at five-year intervals regenerate less consistently. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)
Figure 4 shows a pine savanna that has been burned at five year intervals. Note the presence of hardwoods in most areas of the forest floor, and that the trees seem to fall into one of three size classes: young trees only a few inches in diameter (some bending to the ground) in the left foreground, medium sized trees both to the left and right of the younger ones, and a larger size class of mature trees in the middle and on the left. This multiple size class distribution suggests that regeneration has been less constant in this five-year rotation area than in the three-year rotation area shown in Figure 3.
