Using witness trees as pyro-indicators to depict past fire environments across the eastern United States

Fire Ecology

Table 1 Summary information for the six studies included in this review

Study area	Area (ha)	Survey type	Number of witness trees/towns	Number of species/genera		Citation
Study area	Area (ha)	Survey type	Number of witness trees/towns	Pyrophilic	Pryophobic	Citation
Monongahela National Forest	710,000	Meets-and-bounds	~ 22,000	19	30	Thomas-Van Gundy and Nowacki. 2013
Allegheny National Forest	671,843^a	Rectangular	3003	16	29	Thomas-Van Gundy, Nowacki and Cogbill. 2015
Finger Lakes National Forest	112,146^a	Rectangular	585	16	29	Thomas-Van Gundy, Nowacki and Cogbill. 2015
Green Mountain National Forest	734,003^a	Proprietary towns	1007	16	29	Thomas-Van Gundy, Nowacki and Cogbill. 2015
White Mountain National Forest	1,181,553^a	Proprietary towns	748	16	29	Thomas-Van Gundy, Nowacki and Cogbill. 2015
Northeastern United States	41,485,135^a	Public land surveys, rectangular surveys, and deeds	701	16	29	Thomas-Van Gundy, Nowacki and Cogbill. 2015
Minnesota, two forested ecological domains	~ 15,309,058	Public land survey	354,836	16	36	Thomas-Van Gundy and Nowacki 2016
Wayne National Forest	34,622	Public land survey	5534	12	19	Nowacki et al. 2020
Southern Lake Michigan	2,254,616	Public land survey	28,082^b	26	41	Thomas-Van Gundy et al. 2020
Southwestern Illinois	504,110	Public land survey	9807^b	26	41	Thomas-Van Gundy et al. 2020
Southern Illinois	537,063	Public land survey	4976^b	26	41	Thomas-Van Gundy et al. 2020
Minnesota and Wisconsin	34,648,861	Public land surveys	7376^c	7	21	Nowacki and Thomas-Van Gundy 2022

^aArea of interpolated surfaces, the square extent of the witness tree points used as input to kriging, minus larger lakes
^bNumber of points with up to four trees listed at a point
^cNumber of 8 × 8-km grids summarized and standardized by Goring et al. (2015)