Grassland Fire Effects on Steel Fence Posts

Rangeland fire effects on flora, fauna, soils, and water have been studied widely. Fire effects information is limited on rangeland developments such as fencing. Fencing is an integral part of rangeland infrastructure and receives much attention when there is a wildfire or even discussion about cond...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRangeland ecology & management Vol. 72; no. 2; pp. 411 - 413
Main Authors Weir, John R., Starns, Heath D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Lawrence the Society for Range Management 01.03.2019
Elsevier Inc
Elsevier Limited
Subjects
Adhesion
Adhesion tests
Age
fencing
Fires
Flora
Forest & brush fires
Grasslands
Ground level
Hardness
infrastructure
International standards
Metals
Prescribed fire
range developments
Rangelands
Soil water
Steel
T post
wildfire
Wildfires
United States > US
Oklahoma
T post
infrastructure
wildfire
prescribed fire
fencing
range developments
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Summary:Rangeland fire effects on flora, fauna, soils, and water have been studied widely. Fire effects information is limited on rangeland developments such as fencing. Fencing is an integral part of rangeland infrastructure and receives much attention when there is a wildfire or even discussion about conducting prescribed fires. Due to known fence age and fire history, we conducted a study on the Oklahoma State University Research Range located near Stillwater, Oklahoma. Five randomly selected individual metal T posts were sampled from a common fence line of known age and fire treatment. The T posts ranged from 4 to 35 yr since fence construction, with fire activity of 0, 1, 3, or 12 prescribed fires and 0, 1, or 2 wildfire occurrences. Each T post was tested in situ at 40 cm, 80 cm, and 120 cm above ground level for hardness and paint adhesion as set forth by American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International standards for hot wroughtmetal fence posts. Our results found no differences in post hardness, with all posts tested being higher than the ASTM minimum standard of 83 Rockwell BHardness Scale. We also found that paint adhesion between burned and unburned T posts did not vary, with age of post being the only significant predictor variable for adhesion. Overall, our results provide evidence that T posts exposed to numerous fires and fire types did not suffer negative effects. This shows that concerns about wildfire and prescribed fires in grasslands having negative effects on metal T posts are unfounded.
ISSN:1550-7424
1551-5028
DOI:10.1016/j.rama.2018.10.007