Fire meadows at Mt. Adams

The North Cascade Meadow Stewards are very interested in fire as an ecological means of maintaining flowering plant habitat in subalpine meadows. Two years ago, Jim Davis and I explored the site of a 5 year old burn on Johannesburg Mountain in the North Cascades. Last year, we explored the site of a 2015 fire on Stewart Mountain in the Cascade foothill near Bellingham. This year, we decided to explore the 2012 Cascade Creek burn on the flanks of Mount Adams.

A team including Katrina, Jazmen, Maddie, Collin, Jim, and I drove from Bellingham to Trout Lake and then on forest roads up to Stagman Ridge on the southwest side of Mt. Adams. We camped at the trailhead and spent all day Sunday looking at flowers and bees along the 4-mile ridge trail. It was interesting to compare the difference in vegetation between areas that had and hadn’t burned, as well as look at the difference in fire effects between montane and subalpine forests.

The forests around Mt. Adams have a drier feel than those on the western slopes of the North Cascades. The trail starts at 4200’ and climbs gently through an unburned corridor with an amazing diversity of young conifers including Douglas Fir, two types of hemlock, Engelmann Spruce, two types of pine, and two or three true firs. In areas that were open enough for light to reach the understory, shrubs like Ceonothus, Thimbleberry, Oregon Box, Serviceberry, Ocean Spray, and Bitter Cherry grew abundantly along with some wildflowers like Fireweed, Columbia Lily, Violets, and Sandworts.

Just before the Wilderness Boundary the trail crosses into the burned forests. The 2012 fire killed nearly all the trees and in the 5 years since, the ample light reaching the understory has created vigorous herb growth with scattered shrubs like Black Huckleberry and an occasional Blue Elderberry. This pattern continued as we gained elevation but with decreasing shrub regeneration and increasing dominance of sedges.

During our slow walk up Stagman Ridge we saw bumble bees on Lupine at the lower elevations, and butterflies on Columbia Lily and Penstemon at middle elevations. Jazmen continued up into the alpine beyond Stagman Ridge and saw more bumble bees.

There are many ways to make a mountain meadow. Environmental pressures like deep snow, shifting snow, cold temperatures, fire, and too much or too little water can all limit tree growth and make space for meadows. In the subalpine tension zone, minor alterations in these factors can have dramatic effects. For example, we are observing tree encroachment in many of the meadows around Mt. Baker with tree growth that is limited predominantly by snow pack and cold, and hypothesize that decreases in snow pack from climate change are responsible. In the subalpine forests near Mt. Adams, drought and fire appear to play a much more prominent role holding tree growth in check. Throughout the burn area I saw surprisingly little tree regeneration, even under Lodge Pole Pine, which supports the tension zone hypothesis and may also suggest that much of the burn area we walked was only forested as a result of fire suppression.

As an ethnobotanist, I could not help but notice the bounty of culturally significant plants to Sahaptin, Salishan, and Chinookan Native Americans along the burned portions of Stagman Ridge, especially in the upper montane and lower subalpine zones. Foods like Black Huckleberry, Fireweed, and Columbia Lily along with medicines like Osha, and materials like Beargrass were all abundant. I know that in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the newly established Gifford Pinchot National Forest put a lot of pressure on the Yakama and other tribes to cease their practice of burning mountain meadows. Seeing Stagman Ridge 5 years after a burn gives me a new appreciation for why the fire stick was such a useful land management tool for the Yakama.