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Sequoia Forest Fire, California, 1995

"Hot enough to burn surface duff so seeds can grow but not so hot that it kills large trees, a 13-acre [5.3-hectare] prescribed fire is just what the doctor ordered. 'We're trying to get fire back in the ecosystem,' says Steve Sackett, who did research on this blaze among the giants of Sequoia National Park."

—From "The Essential Element of Fire," September 1996, National Geographic magazine

Photograph by Raymond Gehman