Fire Management

Fire has played a natural role in maintaining the health of the native vegetation of the Malpai region for millenia. The best evidence for the history of fire comes from fire scars in the rings of ponderosa pine trees. Researchers at the University of Arizona Tree Ring Laboratory have collected fire history data from trees across the Southwest, from Sonora, Mexico, to southern Colorado, including mountains in the Malpai area. All of these trees tell the same story: fire burned across this country routinely every five to ten years, with only occasional spans greater than fifteen years with no fire. In fact, during a dry year following wet years, which can also be determined from tree rings, extensive fires burned in virtually every mountain range across the Southwest simultaneously. Evidence for the pervasive historic influence of fire is also found in the sediments of boggy cienega wetlands in the valley bottoms, where charcoal fragments preserved for thousands of years support the conclusion that fires burned frequently across the valleys from one mountain range to another….