Destructive Sampling

This week I was walking along a ridge in the Tushars thinking that I was seeing the same old high-elevation spruce-fir when I suddenly realized that there was charcoal on the ground and a fair amount of ponderosa pine. Ponderosa. At 9300 feet. So, I started giving things another look. In contrast to many of the other stands, this one had clearly been shaped by fire. I found evidence of some very old timber cutting, too. Plus, just where you would least expect it, there were large blue spruce. Not Engelmann spruce, but blue spruce. It really made me wonder what was going on. What kind of stand was this?

I thought about it all night. In the morning, I had an idea. Right in the thick of things I had noticed a large ponderosa that had been killed by a mountain pine beetle attack in 2012. Why not go back there and cut it down? It would allow me to slice the stump into a couple of cookies that I could use to date not only the tree, but the fire history of the stand.

So, I did. I climbed all the way back to the ridge with a chainsaw that must have weighed about 300 pounds. I felled the tree, and got a couple of cookies. But, I couldn't bring them home. At least not both of them. They were too heavy. I took the thinnest one . . . and the 300 pound saw . . . and made it back to the truck with, I think, both of my knees intact. The other cookie is still up there. It is a nice one, too. It is up for grabs. (If you want it, the location is printed on the card in the picture: UTM, Zone 12.)

What is it that a scientist says when the actual outcome does not match the expected outcome? "It will likely take decades before we understand the full impact of these events on this fragile ecosystem." (BTW, I'm not a scientist but I've read about them.) In any case, my sample tree germinated between 1842 and 1849 and my cookie displays not a single fire scar. This was not what I expected, so it required a trip to the library.

European settlement of the area around the Tushars began by about 1860 and, this being Utah, we have pretty good written records of everything that has happened since then. At the library I skimmed through a couple of fairly detailed histories and did not find a single mention of wildfire. Given the reliance of the early pioneers on the natural resources of the area, along with the fact that most of them were outdoors for about 90% of their lives, I would have expected some mention of wildfire. Unless there were no fires. Which is what my cookie tells me. Could it be that the obvious charring that I am seeing pre-dates 1840?