History, uses, and effects of fire in the Appalachians (1989)Van Lear, D. H., & Waldrop, T. A. (1989). History, uses, and effects of fire in the Appalachians. Southeastern Forest Experiment Station, General Technical Report SE-54. Retrieved from http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/191 History of Fire in the Southern Appalachians Ecological and meteorological evidence suggests that lightning-caused fires were a major environmental force shaping the vegetation of the Southeastern United States for millions of years before Indians arrived in America. Lightning served as a mutagenic agent and as a factor in natural selection which forced species to adapt or perish. Before man, fires caused by lightning created and maintained the pine-grasslands of the Southeast, as well as influenced the broad, adjacent ecotones which included hard-wood vegetation (Komarek 1965, 1974) http://www.srs.fs.fed.us/pubs/191
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