Photo Essay: Controlled ecological burns in Ann Arbor

Published Dec. 2023 for the Michigan Daily

“I never imagined 30 years ago there would be such a large group burning forests down,” Remy Long, ​deputy manager of NAP & Land Acquisition​​, says to the group of volunteers circled up next to piles of gear and the big red Natural Area Preservation trailer. It’s noon on a Wednesday at Leslie Woods Nature Area. The sun is out, the temperature is in the 60s with a light southwest breeze. It’s a great day for a burn.

Controlled ecological burns are conducted to enrich the soil and remove dead plant matter, therefore allowing for the diverse native plant and animal communities to flourish. The native ecosystem in Ann Arbor is fire-dependent. Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi and Wyandot peoples practiced these traditional fires. With the European settlers came their practice of fire suppression, which disrupted the natural state and allowed for non-fire-tolerant and non-native plants to outcompete native species.

Fire is necessary to suppress non-native plants and to help the growth of native ones. Jack pine trees are one species native to the Ann Arbor region. Their cones, tightly wrapped and covered in resin, need the heat and smoke from fires to open and regenerate. NAP works to provide each site it oversees with a burn suitable to its area and the native species within.

Nov. 15 was the 30th anniversary of Ann Arbor’s NAP division. Created in 1993, the division cares for Ann Arbor’s natural areas, which make up 1,200 acres. Its mission statement is “to protect and restore Ann Arbor’s natural areas and foster an environmental ethic among its citizens,” which is what fuels the controlled ecological burns. At NAP, these burns are special because they take place in urban settings and introduce the variable of how such a burn will impact the community surrounding the natural area.

Each year, the team at NAP compiles a list of sites for the year based on the historical record of burns in Ann Arbor. For each site, the team creates a prescription for the sites: the plants and animals to be wary of, what is surrounding the area and the weather conditions that it is appropriate to burn in. For fall 2023, the burn season starts Sept. 18 and ends Dec. 22. Each day, the weather forecast determines where to burn, if at all. Humidity, sunlight and wind are the primary variables they focus on. Conducted in urban areas, it is also important to understand how the smoke drift from the fires will impact the communities. With a burn simulator, the team can further assess the potential impact. If the weather aligns with the site prescription and a burn occurs, a media announcement is released to the list of volunteers trained in ecological fires and to the public.

“We’ll often have press notices and be on the radio and really do a good job trying to educate people,” Long said.

Volunteers are essential to these burns. But they aren’t too hard to find, John Metzler makes clear. After all, as he said, “What’s not to like?” Metzler himself has been volunteering for four years. After starting with general volunteering, he saw a chance to participate in the burnings and said it sounded “awesome.” Similarly, Matt Spoor started burning with NAP as an employee and now participates as a volunteer. Others’ journeys are a bit different. Dave Crockett moved to Ann Arbor last January and learned about NAP shortly after.

“I looked at the calendar and the first event that they had was the burn training,” Crockett said. “So I went to that.”

Volunteers generally include University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor residents.

On Nov. 1 at Island Park, NAP hosted a burn training program for prospective volunteers. Within the group of trainees was a U-M School for Environment and Sustainability class, ENVIRON 421, taught by associate research scientist Sara Adlerstein Gonzalez.

“Sometimes I worry that I am creating pyromaniacs (because) the students are always so excited to burn,” Gonzalez said about having the training be a part of the curriculum.

Gonzalez believes that translating the theories and ideas to practice increases students’ understanding of such restorative processes. Furthermore, once her students go through the NAP training, they can volunteer to fulfill the requirements of her course and put the class’s teachings into their skill set.

Volunteer and outreach coordinator Tina Stephens and stewardship specialist Rachel Maranto lead the training. The two first do trivia covering burns and burn safety topics addressed in training videos required for the volunteers. Each trainee who gives a correct answer receives a piece of candy. After both candy and questions are exhausted and the abundance of shared knowledge of the group is made clear, the trainees are divided and head to four different stations. Led by NAP Crew members, trainees learn how to suit up in fire-safe gear, use radios during burns, use water packs and nozzles, and use a variety of other tools. At the end of the session, a mock burn tests each group on their preparation and readiness for assisting a burn.

For the burn that occurred on Nov. 15, NAP set up in the parking lot of Willowtree Apartments and Tower on the edge of Leslie Woods Nature Area. The red trailer was easy to spot as I drove up, passing various signs informing residents and passersby of the coming burn. A large group of volunteers suited up in fire protective gear: heavy boots, helmets with visors, heat and puncture-resistant gloves, and bright yellow protective jackets, pants and hoods. Out from the trailer, volunteers carried radios, water tanks and fire torches.

Stephens was the “burn boss” for the day’s burn. Maranto shadowed her in training to be a future burn boss. As the volunteers finished suiting up, Stephens distributed maps of the area, gathering everyone together to go over the details of the burn. Stephens informed the group of areas of caution, such as down logs that are most likely very dry and shouldn’t be burned, the species native to the area that are of concern and how to react when encountering them, and finally checking in with volunteers as to how long they can be here and to divvy them up into teams. NAP Crew member Jessica Einsk told the group about the weather and, most importantly, the direction of the wind. Throughout the burn, Einsk remained within the residential area to track the smoke pattern and rate the thickness of it on a scale of one to five. The goal is to stay under a three for the residents’ safety.

The teams communicated with Stephens through radios as she instructed them on how they should be moving and the progress of the burn. They followed the lines of burn that were prepped ahead of time by NAP Crew members Josh Doyle and Gabby DeMott. Doyle and DeMott created boundaries around fallen logs and bushels of dry wood that, if sparked, would create a larger fire than needed and burn longer than NAP intends to. These boundaries and lines of burn are clear paths to assist with containing the burn to only the area needed to be burned. Along the lines of the burn were small flags signifying the letter-titled breaks along the boundary lines shown on the map. Upon Stephens’ instruction, the teams moved from break to break with their fire torches spreading the burn farther throughout the area and maintaining an understanding of how far the burn was along the boundary lines. A smaller group then moved through the middle of the site, taking the burn from one side to the other.

As the crew filled up water tanks, grabbed torches and checked that they had each necessary piece of gear, Stephens ran a radio check with every crew member. Then, one by one, the groups headed into the woods. At break C, Stephens called the fire department to inform them of the burn occurring. At 12:59 p.m., a fire torch was lit. The burn began.

From break C, Metzler’s group moved toward break D, where another group waited to start as yet another group moved to break B. In the middle of the site, Stephens and Maranto oversaw the groups as they went. Once Metzler’s group met the next, he and another volunteer broke off to start burning through the middle; Crockett and DeMott soon joined at the direction of Stephens through the radio. As they moved through the middle, their priority was stopping the fires from catching areas of caution: down logs and general dry wood. The crew formed boundaries with the fire around the areas of caution so the fire would spread out away from the dry wood.

“If these catch, we’ll be here all night,” Metzler explained.

To prevent this, the team members with water tanks sprayed water on areas of caution to stop them from catching and to prevent slop-over, which is when the fire moves outside of the boundary lines and outside of the site.

Metzler and Crockett moved through the middle, working away from each other and break C to cover the most ground. Shortly after starting work on the middle of the site, Metzler stopped and asked Stephens and Maranto if “the photographer could have a little fun” — he meant me, and they said yes. Metzler gave me one of his gloves and held up his lit fire torch. He instructed me to touch it, so I did, promptly extinguishing the flame. The act is distinctly familiar to licking your fingers to put out a match — a slightly hazardous but simple act. The gloves were thick and protective, and I didn’t feel a thing. But Metzler didn’t stop there; he handed me his other glove and the now-extinguished fire torch. He instructed me to light the torch using the previously set flames and then to start to form a boundary line around the down log just next to us. I did, catching the torch and dragging it across the kindling to form a line of flames. It was similar to drawing but with a heavy metal torch. I drew around the small log creating a ring, and the flames I placed down started to spread. It was thrilling, the appeal of doing such work tangible in that moment. I returned the torch and gloves to Metzler. He had quite a bit more terrain to cover before the site was fully burned.

For the next couple of hours, the groups moved the fire across the area. Having started from the far corner, they worked into the wind so as to not breathe in the smoke. As the fire started to reach the boundary on the opposite side of where the crew started, Stephens radioed groups to stop moving the fire across and start “mop up.” Mop-up is the post-fire process that involves the crew going through the now-burned area and ensuring that all coals are put out. In a small and limited area such as the Leslie Woods Nature Area unit, it is essential that when NAP leaves all fire is extinguished. This is a unique aspect of ecological controlled burns in an urban setting. The crew used the water tanks to spray water on still-burning areas while also using their boots to stomp out coals. For larger, still-burning wood, the crew used tools to break off the bark to expose the coals and then sprayed water.

Once the burn covered the majority of the site, Stephens walked through the burned unit to mark areas that needed to be prioritized for mop-up. She radioed back and forth with Einsk about the smoke level in the residential area, which stayed around two. The fire still burned on the far boundary side, but a larger task was at hand. There was a standing tree on fire.

Stephens radioed Doyle to come to chop down the tree.

“We really tried to avoid cutting this down during prep,” Doyle says.

NAP tried to be as noninvasive with these burns as possible, and a part of that is trying not to chop down trees. However, unexpected events occur during any burn.

With a small group of volunteers who stood by with water to put the flames out, I watched Doyle use a chainsaw and a hatchet to down the tree. A loud buzz became a chop and then a break. The tree fell over and hit the ground with a large cloud of smoke rising away from it. Doyle continued to chop the tree into pieces so that the coals were easier to access and could be put out. Once he was finished, the mop-up continued.

For the Leslie Woods Nature Area burn, Stephens and NAP’s main objectives were to suppress non-native growth and stimulate oaks, hickories and herbaceous native species.

“In the short term, we would hope to see dead non-native shrubs and black cherry saplings,” Stephens said.

Long-term it is the regeneration of the site that shows the burn’s success. This will be noted through the appearance of more native and fire-adaptive plants over invasive ones.

My camera battery had died, only having hung on to photograph the falling of the flaming tree. I needed to return to campus soon: I was covered in soot, smelled like flames and perhaps had breathed in too much smoke. Yet I wanted to linger and I started to think of the next time I may be able to either watch or participate in such an event. I thought about each volunteer the morning of receiving the same email I did, rushing to spend more than four hours of their day working on this restorative process. I thought of Stephens informing me that there was a waitlist for the burn today— that they had more volunteers respond than needed.

Fire is to be embraced in these moments and practices. Our ecosystem needs it. Without it, the native species can’t survive and regenerate while non-native species will then be able to compete. The soil is enriched and dead matter is removed. As each volunteer moves their flame across the unit, they are giving back to their community the gift of restoration and preservation. Fire can be scary, and NAP knows this and makes efforts to make sure the community surrounding each unit stays safe. They find beauty in these flames and show up to each burn with these benefits in mind. They are eager, excited and passionate.

After all, who wouldn’t want to burn?