Bradly J. Boner | Photography

Forest fire invertebrate impact study

University of Oklahoma principal investigator Hayley Lanier and biology undergrad Robert Beers catalogue a vole caputred in one of the study plots. A fire that burned through some of the researchers’ grids in 2016 offers them a unique chance for comparison. “The younger grids didn’t seem to burn as hot as the old growth grids,” faculty researcher Zac Roehrs said. Their guess is because with a shorter interval between fires, the younger trees that started to grow after the 1988 fires hadn’t reached the point where they were producing a lot of cones. When a forest burns, snags first remain upright but over time, they fall down — impacting what kind of life can exist on the forest floor. “It’s really like taking pixie sticks and dropping them,” Seville said. “You end up with this coarse woody debris that is very dense and very interwoven.”

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University of Oklahoma principal investigator Hayley Lanier and biology undergrad Robert Beers catalogue a vole caputred in one of the study plots. A fire that burned through some of the researchers’ grids in 2016 offers them a unique chance for comparison. “The younger grids didn’t seem to burn as hot as the old growth grids,” faculty researcher Zac Roehrs said. Their guess is because with a shorter interval between fires, the younger trees that started to grow after the 1988 fires hadn’t reached the point where they were producing a lot of cones. When a forest burns, snags first remain upright but over time, they fall down — impacting what kind of life can exist on the forest floor. “It’s really like taking pixie sticks and dropping them,” Seville said. “You end up with this coarse woody debris that is very dense and very interwoven.”