Forest fire research in Lithuania – what does the synergy of science and nature reveal?
Southern Illinois University professor Charles Ruffner, who visited the Vytautas Magnus University Agriculture Academy (VMU AA), together with the Academy’s dr. Michael Manton and colleagues are researching Lithuania’s forest fire history and show that trees can tell an important story.
“I would say this August trip is a follow on to my earlier spring trip, where dr. M. Manton and I, along with a colleague from the United States had started our second wave of this fire history research. We visited and selected several new forest sites including stands in Anyksiai, Kazlu-Ruda, Varėna, Prienai, and Dubrava with visible fire scars collecting >150 new samples. We have been working all summer to date them and I am really here to conduct what is called cross-dating or cross checking the fire dates and signature years, to validate our research results. You always want to have two sets of eyes, essentially, so there’s a positive check, and that is what we have been doing all morning in the lab. As far as this trip, it is just for quality assurance, really, quality control of our dataset and to continue building our collaboration between SIU and VMU. Over the next couple of months, dr. M. Manton and I will be working on an upcoming presentation at the Natural Areas Conference and a future publication on Lithuania’s forest fire history in these newly sampled areas.
“At the same time, we also want to build for the future. We have plans that include a joint PhD student. We also want to visit a few more sites in Lithuania to assess opportunities for possible future studies as well. Our first study started down in the Dzūkija National Park. From that first sampling, we published a paper on the fire history of the forest landscape and now endeavour to expand our research to other regions of Lithuania. I would hope that dr. M. Manton and I will continue working together over the next decade and have a really nice fire history chronology for the entire country of Lithuania,” said Ch. Ruffner.
Having become a frequent guest in Lithuania, the professor noticed that the condition of our country’s forests is good: the trees look healthy, there are many of them. “From a very cursory look at the forest it looks very healthy. You fly over the country and it just looks beautiful from the air. Being an American, I see things that kind of make me scratch my head because I may not understand why forestry does certain practices here. There are always regional differences in how forestry is practiced. But I fell in love with the country in 2017 because of the wonderful forest, the history of the culture, and, of course, the friendly relations. I do not know if that answers your question, but in my assessment, it appears Lithuanians are very connected to their forests. For instance, there is probably growing concerns with wildfire hazards, and the growing incidence of fire, with climate change. But that’s what we are setting out to do, is to see what role fire has played in the forests of Lithuania in the past. I certainly think there is a current role for fire, but convincing the administration, the ministry, and the foresters, that fire is an appropriate management tool right now is probably a decade down the road before we convince a lot of foresters to put fire on the ground.” And it has taken a long time in America for that shift to change as well. This year wildfires have been devastating in Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Czech Republic and France. Poland even had a couple of fires. It seems like Lithuania is outside of that realm at the moment,“ noticed the professor.
Proposing a question about the future trends regarding forest fires and the fire rate of the broader world, professor Ch. Ruffner questioned whether it is both climate change and/or mismanagement of the forest matrix. He added: “I would say it is probably a synergy of both those factors because you have taken fire as a natural disturbance off of the landscape, by suppressing all the fires since World War II. Across Europe due to both climate and forest management, we have a backlog of missed fires that should have been happening regularly, but have not which has caused an increase in fuel loading. Now all of a sudden, these fires are starting and potentially have high fire risk. And it is not that we are having more fires. The thing is that the effects of those fires are more devastating because we have had 60 years of effective fire control, and fuel build up in the forest., and thus when fire does occur, you have a catastrophic fire instead of just a normal fire that would move through the understory of a forest. I think the conditions are different now as far as the amount of fuel loading. Maybe it is a little bit drier, but yeah, it is hard to say what is driving it.”
“And of course, the differences between southern Europe and northern Europe, they are pretty incomparable in terms of forest types and climate,” added dr. M. Manton.
Prof. Ch. Ruffner showed a sample of what it is called a fire scar cookie which is piece of wood taken as a sample from the living tree. Professor explained further: “The tree is still living, but you look at the tree and you see this dead spot. There is another live piece over here. A fire occurred here in 1947, and it didn’t kill the entire tree. It only kills a certain portion of the growing tissue. And then through time, that tree will heal over that wound. The fire scar and the tree rings can show you what is happening in the forest, in terms of fires and climate. Trees are great storytellers. They capture this in their tree rings. And once you date this stuff, you can identify when the fires occur with the seasonality, and the relative frequency between fires? Is it driven by climate? OR Is it driven by human activities? Those are some of the questions that we can answer about the forest sites we have selected to study.”
“We can say from our first study in Dzūkija that cultural events were responsible for the rich fire history, like World War I, World War II and the Soviet era. You can clearly see there was partisan uprising and subsequent forest disturbances,” said dr. M. Manton.
Professor Ch. Ruffner conducts research on the history of forest fires not only in Lithuania, but also in other countries. “My main research area is North America. But I have been lucky enough to work in places like the Dominican Republic, and Afghanistan. Interestingly, virtually everywhere I have worked, fire is a natural forest component. In some places it is very frequent, other places it is less frequent. But it is a natural component of all the landscapes I have worked on.
According to the scientist, research into the history of forest fires requires a lot of careful work. “It is a big process, kind of understanding where it started out with dr. M. Manton. It’s just like understanding the ecology of the site because the location, topography, weather, soils, they drive natural forest disturbances. There is a natural component of the ecosystem, but then you add humans to that, and you have a human component that drives fires as well. Fire in Lithuania is either caused by lightning, or humans and trying to figure out that interaction is very interesting. That part has always been fun, honestly, this kind of work that we are doing now, is like using a hand lens and microscope. It is not all that exciting work, but it is necessary to make sure that you have good quality control and good statistics,” said Ch. Ruffner.
How did prof. Ch. Ruffner start collaboration with VMU AA? And I hate to say this in an interview but coming to Lithuania was almost an afterthought. It was not on my targeted list of countries to visit, honestly. But our university and VMU have an interesting relationship over the years. A colleague of mine, dr. Andrew Carver had a Lithuanian PhD student during the early 2000s. According to dr. M. Manton, the partnership between Southern Illinois University and VMU spans several decades (1990). “More recently, collaboration between VMU and SUI has become active. In 2017, Professor dr. Gediminas Brazaitis and two PhD students were invited to go to Southern Illinois University and attended a summer school on forest management. Subsequently Ch. Ruffner was presented with the opportunity to visit VMU and Lithuania through the ERASMUS program. Through these visits we have built a strong educational and research collaboration. So I was aware of Lithuanian forestry, but never really got into it until 2016 when prof. dr. Gediminas Brazaitis visited SIU. The very next spring was 2017 and that was my first trip to Lithuania. It just like, pulled the blinders off and I fell in love Lithuania. We have built a great working relationship. I plan to continue my working relationship with Lithuania and VMU for the next decade or so, and it just seems like a very rich place to work as far as the resources here. People are very willing to work with me on Lithuania’s fire history and sustainable forest management,” said prof. Ch. Ruffner. “When prof. Ch. Ruffner first come, everyone says, go to Dzūkija because it is a big dry Pine forest landscape. So that is why our initial fire history research targeted Dzūkija. But then we also did some mapping of the forest site type to look at the soil moisture and soil fertility that gives an indicator of the natural fire frequencies and how often fire should occur. Thus, we have also focused on the driest forest sites spread through Lithuania as they should have the most rich fire histories. In reality, we did have some target areas.
We had our first paper published this year. As a part of the Naturalit Life project lead by Prof. dr. G. Brazaitis at VMU, Prof. Ch. Ruffner was one of the key presenters and panel members for the, Baltic forest fire Conference in Spring 2021” said dr. M. Manton. “More than 500 people from around the world attended this online event. It was a big event, I mean it is like one of the biggest conferences on forest fire that I have attended,” added prof. Ch. Ruffner.
“In 2019, we had a fire meeting down in Dzūkija attended by 75 people from the forest industry. We had an indoor talk and did a workshop in the field. So, we are continuing to keep building our collaboration and research network. Prof. Ch. Ruffner came in April with Brian Van Winkle who is also forester in the US as part of an Erasmus scheme. Brian was here on his own self-funded trip. So that was amazing. And now dr. M. Manton has received ERASMUS funding to visit prof. Ch. Ruffner and SIU this October.
According to prof. Ch. Ruffner and dr. M. Manton the interest of scientific communities in researching the history of forest fires is constantly growing. “Certainly, at our university (SIU), since I teach a lot of fire, a lot of our students are very interested. However, world events of recent years have also affected the plans of scientists. “It has been very difficult actually with COVID-19 and the events in Ukraine. In 2021, prof. Ch. Ruffner had a summer camp arranged for 15-20 students from SIU to visit Lithuania for two weeks. However, that was cancelled due to COVID-19, then in 2022 another summer school was planned, but because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the high tension in Europe that was also cancelled. We will endeavour to get this camp happening again. The fact that I’ve gotten two classes full of students to come here, even though they have not actually done shows there is interest in Lithuania and its forest landscape. But it all comes down to funding availability. There is definitely enough in Lithuania for students to see and learn about. Hopefully in October we can generate a bit of interest in Lithuania and VMU with SIU’s students and we can plan another summer school,” said dr. M. Manton.
Finally, we would like to develop a dendrochronology lab here at VMU by continuing to build our research. The study of tree ring growth in time. Currently we are also looking to develop a joint masters and PhD candidate positions to help enable a long-term study program here at VMU and kind of put it on the map. I mean, the university is already on the map, but not from a dendrochronological standpoint,” said prof. Ch. Ruffner. Any prospective PhD candidates should contact Prof. Ruffner or dr. Manton. Eventually we are also hoping prof. Ch. Ruffner can visit VMU for a sabbatical,” said dr. M. Manton.
