Our next meeting is:
Tuesday October 21st
Doors open at 6:45PM
Capital Vision Church - 1775 Yew Ave NE, Olympia, WA 98506
FREE and OPEN to the Public
Bring in any interesting mushrooms that you would like to have identified by our experts.
We will go over some club business and then our main lecture will begin around 7:30PM
Speaker Dave Peter: Olympic Peninsula fire history and its ecological implications for the southeastern Olympic Peninsula
Forest fires are usually not the first thing that comes to mind about the Olympic Peninsula. In fact, the Olympic Peninsula has a complex and diverse fire history including massive catastrophic fires in its past. Its fire history ranges from little to none in portions of the western Peninsula, to frequent and large fires in the east and north. Moreover, there is a rich history of native burning to maintain prairies, savannas and woodlands that figures prominently in its fire history and ecology. In modern times people have interfered with both native and natural burning, resulting in major changes in the vegetation of the Peninsula. The southeastern portion of the Olympic Peninsula encapsulates the diversity of natural and anthropogenic burning regimes on the Peninsula, and this area will be the focus of the talk. We’ll explore its history and ecology, and the implications of modern interference for the future.
Dave spent more than 40 years working in Pacific Northwest vegetation prior to
retirement in 2021. He worked for 20 years as an Ecologist for the Olympic and Mt.
Baker-Snoqualmie National Forests on plant community classifications and fire history. For the next twenty-three years he worked as an Ecologist at the Pacific Northwest Research Station in Olympia on the ecology of Oregon white oak, whitebark pine, beargrass, western Washington prairies and silviculture. His experience with Pacific Northwest botany began in his native southwestern Idaho where he earned his B. S. in Biology at the College of Idaho. He continued on in eastern Washington earning his master’s degree in Botany at Washington State University, followed years later by his doctorate at the University of Washington with a dissertation on the effects of fire on acorn production in Oregon white oak. Along the way he had shorter stints studying Pinyon-Juniper woodlands in Nevada, and plant communities in the Blue Mountains and Hell’s Canyon in Oregon and Idaho. In retirement he is working on several papers including one on the prairies, savannas and woodlands of the Olympic Peninsula formerly maintained with fire by native people.
Also check out other Meetups in Olympia.
