What stories could the stumps of ancient trees tell? That is not a mystical question; it’s the stuff of science. Jean Huffman, a fire ecologist at Louisiana State University and Tall Timbers Research Station, is decoding the secrets of ancient stumps to help Florida land managers restore the longleaf pine ecosystem. By using a combination of ancient pine stumps and tree core data, she is extending our knowledge of fire ecology back hundreds of years to figure out how often the land really...