In the end, says Grace, the fuel conditions and the weather conditions created a catastrophic event. Throughout June and July some 2,500 fires, many of severe intensity, burned roughly half a million acres of the Florida landscape. In the fall of 1998, Grace, of the USGS National Wetlands Research Center, joined an interagency team of scientists formed under the leadership of the USGS and the U.S. Forest Service with support from the federal Joint Fire Science Board. The research team, which included representatives from a number of federal and state agencies as well as private institutions, had been mobilized to rapidly assess and study the ecological and economic impacts of the Florida wildfires. Over the past year Grace's work has focused on how native and exotic plant species have responded in the aftermath of the severe wildfire.
Grace says that in the year following the fires, the plant response has been encouraging.
Fire is actually very good for the native plants, she says. Although the 1998 fires were very damaging economically, they were good ecologically. No endemic species were harmed by the fires, and Grace's surveys have revealed larger populations and expanded ranges of a number of threatened flowers and grasses. One native shrub species, the Rugels pawpaw, increased from only 200 individuals before the wildfires to more than 2,000 afterward. Other rarities, including pitcher plants, lilies and native grasses such as the Florida three-awn, were found in locations where they had not previously been known to occur.