This brief disturbance caused a dramatic shift in forest composition in favor of evergreens, which persists today.
In many of these ecosystems, fire suppression and other land use policies have resulted in significant changes in forest composition and structure.
Environmental change is here registered as a modification of forest composition rather than as weed-infested secondary rainforest.
Human activity has altered the forest composition significantly since European settlement.
While logging and reforestation have affected forest composition, approximately 75 percent of the trees in the watershed are between 80-800 years.
The Indians also set deliberate vast fires to modify the forest composition to favor certain game, such as deer.
Within some areas of the park, the forest composition has changed very little.
This leads to competition for food with native forest birds, changes in forest composition, and eventually canopy collapse.
None of the islands in the lake of Ellensvatn have had fires, giving it a unique forest composition.
No other data set comes close to providing this estimate of original forest composition and structure, and the data have accordingly been used very heavily.