Great Basin Fire Science Exchange

Leading Effective Community-Driven Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP)
2025-06-09 - 2025-06-10
Training details and registration.
In this streamlined class, you’ll learn how to guide a focused and actionable Community Wildfire Protection Plan process that delivers results. You’ll learn to:

Map out each stage of CWPP development
Assess local wildfire risks using trusted tools
Engage your community and prioritize treatments
Build and implement a results-driven action plan

Training will be JUNE 9 – 10
8 A.M. – 5 P.M. Redmond Fire and Rescue
341 NW Dogwood Ave. Redmond, Oregon

IMAGINE field workshop
2025-06-10 - 2025-06-11
Register for Level 2 Field Workshop in Elko, NV
This two-day workshops are designed to take an in depth look at how you can apply a set of principles and tools to strategically manage IAGs in both Eastern Idaho and Northern Great Basin. Our target audience includes both land managers and producers. Whether you are from the area or from the greater western US, these workshops are designed to help participants gain knowledge about how to best tackle IAGs through conversations about various management practices depending on invasion severity and recovery potential. Management goals can vary depending on how success is defined.
Additionally, we will visit a spectrum of sites from intact core areas to other rangelands areas. At these various sites, we will talk about potential management tactics and explore how different government agencies are tackling the issue based on various circumstances. Through this field workshop, our goal is to have participants become more confident with the different planning and management tools and help them to determine best management tactics to fit their situations.

Improving resilience and reducing wildfire risk in Pine Valley
2025-06-10 10:00 - 10:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
View video (6:53).
In a collaborative effort with Dixie National Forest, Sarah Barga, a research botanist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station, outlines a project focused on building ecosystem resilience and resistance in Utah’s Pine Valley Ranger District. A team of specialists from the National Forest system, Utah State University, and Rocky Mountain Research station are examining the roles of invasive species, local vegetation, and fire history in managing this key landscape. The project launched in 2024 with initial ground truthing surveys to build out localized strategies to support the recovery of native understory plants resistant to invasives like cheatgrass and resilient to wildfire. The work underscores the significance of adapting efforts at the local level and the role of partnerships in integrating knowledge into future planning for improved management outcomes.

Wildfire data is the new bacon
2025-06-17 11:00 - 12:00
Webinar recording.
Learn about new geospatial data products to support wildfire planning and response including national fuel treatments, fire response districts and communities mapping.

Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP): Integrating smoke preparedness
2025-06-18 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording (1:07:53).
Are you planning for smoke preparedness and mitigation in your community and looking to embed that work into your Community Wildfire Protection Plan? Join our discussion and talk with experts about tips and resources for integrating smoke considerations into your CWPPs.

The Joint Fire Science Program describes its Fire Science Exchange Network
2025-06-23 08:00 - 08:30
View video (6:21)
The Fire Science Exchange Network, part of the Joint Fire Science Program, connects wildland fire research with the people who need it most—land managers, firefighters, practitioners, and communities. Through regional exchanges, they deliver science you can use to make informed wildland fire and land management decisions.

Mapping and tracking California forests
2025-06-23 08:00 - 09:00
Webinar recording.
The Center for Ecosystem Climate Solutions (CECS), with support from California’s Strategic Growth Council (SGC), built a data cube of California forest conditions for 1985 to 2023. These data include state-wide, 30-m information on ecosystem disturbance, carbon, water, and fire hazard. These data are being tested against field observations with support from CALFIRE, and an updated 2024 dataset is nearing release. This presentation will introduce the data cube and use it to quantify recent changes in California’s wildlands.
Mike Goulden is a Professor of Earth System Science (ESS) at UC Irvine. Goulden’s research focuses on Ecosystem ecology, and the Biological, physical, and chemical controls on terrestrial carbon and water cycling. Goulden has conducted extensive fieldwork on carbon exchange in tropical, boreal and temperate ecosystems. Goulden’s more recent work emphasizes satellite-based mapping of ecosystem conditions and function.
The Forest Health Research Program is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of Cap-and-Trade dollars to work reducing greenhouse gas emissions, strengthening the economy, and improving public health and the environment — particularly in disadvantaged communities.

Cross-boundary collaborative stewardship
2025-06-24 11:00 - 12:00
Webinar registration.
Hosted by the Montana Forest Collaboration Network
OBJECTIVES:
– Discuss the characteristics of cross-boundary projects and how they increase efficiency and effectiveness when managing priority landscapes
– Inspire more cross-boundary work in Montana
– Build awareness of how collaborative partners can support cross-boundary projects
– Discuss the mechanics of planning and implementing forest management projects across land management boundaries
– Share examples of cross-boundary projects in Montana

How LANDFIRE EVT contributes to the estimation of forage
2025-06-25 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording.
Title: How LANDFIRE EVT contributes to the estimation of forage and seasonal range in Idaho: A perspective through time 2003-2023
Speaker: Scott Bergen, Senior Wildlife Research Biologist, Idaho Department of Fish and Game
Summary: Idaho Dept of Fish and Game uses LANDFIRE extant vegetation type databases 2001-2023 to estimate seasonal range analyses of Idaho’s big game species. Using mule deer as a focal species, IDFG has developed multi-temporal analyses that use GPS data that has been collected from deployed location collars through time (2003- present). One of the most influential factors in determining mule deer summer range is the quality of forage where IDFG reclassifies EVT vegetation data into forage type data. This data, along with several other graphic data are ‘mined’ using machine-learning algorithms to estimate both winter and summer range conditions for a seasonally migratory species and their conservation management. We will discuss how LANDFIRE data is used, some of the problems and inconsistencies found with LANDFIRE (2001-2023), and how LANDFIRE is an invaluable resource for the management of this iconic western species.

Applying rangeland tools and concepts for fire and fuel management
2025-06-25 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording (49:44).
Matt Reeves, (Fuel and Forage), US Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station

First comes fire - Then comes flood
2025-06-25 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar registration.
The cascading effects of post wildfire can bring more devastation to an already battered community. Utah’s Post Wildfire Mitigation Team, established in 2019, is led by the Utah Division of Emergency Management. It brings together Federal, State, private and local partners to meet with communities throughout Utah affected by wildfires. The team discusses actions, makes available resources, and identifies hazard mitigation opportunities to assist communities with the cascading events that can occur post wildfire. Bringing a “One stop shop” to communities.

How do fire managers use information? Developing practical weather and climate information
2025-06-26 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording.
Description: Three short presentations about recent work from the University of Arizona on understanding how wildland fire managers in the Southwest value and use weather and climate information and decision support tools, and developing experimental weather and climate tools that are easy to use and fulfill a direct need for wildland fire managers.
When researchers tried to estimate the value of weather and climate information for fire management, they quickly found that while wildland fire managers have access to a vast array of data and information sources, relatively few are routinely used to inform decisions – and some decision support systems are not necessarily used to support decisions. Through focus groups, interviews, and analysis of detailed survey data, researchers began to glean insight into barriers to information use. This presentation touches on the value of truly use-inspired information relative to top-down products, describes an experimental tool (Burn Period Tracker) that was developed in response, and explores unanswered research questions.
Presenters: Michael Crimmins, Department of Environmental Science; Daniel Ferguson, Department of Environmental Science, Arizona Institute for Resilience; George Frisvold, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics.

Tree growth and resilience of aspen and Chihuahua pine in Saguaro National Park
2025-07-01 08:00 - 09:00
Webinar recording.
Presenters: Gabrielle Ayres, Erin Todd, and Peter Fulé with Northern Arizona University School of Forestry, Alicia Azpeleta Tarancón – Mediterranean Ecogeomorphological and Hydrological Connectivity Research Team with University of the Balearic Islands, and Will Flatley – Department of Geography with the University of Central Arkansas.
Description: At the upper elevations of Saguaro National Park, aspen and Chihuahua pine persist under starkly different ecological strategies—one moisture-dependent, the other adapted to fire and drought. This presentation draws on tree-ring data and climate-driven growth simulations to examine how these species have responded to past climate variability and what their trajectories may look like under hotter, drier conditions. The results reveal patterns of species-specific resilience and provide actionable insight for climate-adaptive management in this iconic desert sky island.

Targeted grazing S6 E4 of Reading the Tea Leaves
2025-07-09 11:00 - 11:30
View presentation (23:42).
Targeted grazing presents a great opportunity for managing fuels in rangeland environments. However, there numerous considerations that must be thought through and discussed prior to implementation. Issues such as poisonous plants, livestock acclimation, phenology, and nutritional concerns are among the list discussed in this episode. In this webcast, Research Ecologist, Matt Reeves discusses these issues and a decision support system aimed at improving strategic and prioritized targeted grazing across the U.S. West. For previous episodes, visit the Reading the Tea Leaves page.

How LANDFIRE uses image-based modeling to map vegetation and update fuels
2025-07-30 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording.
Speaker: Daryn Dockter, LANDFIRE Technical Lead, TSSC, EROS

Building for Wildfire Resilience in Hawai'i
2025-07-31 15:00 - 16:00
Webinar recording.

FUEL + (LAND)FIRE = SMOKE
2025-08-27 10:00 - 23:00
Webinar recording (50:02).
In this LANDFIRE Office Hour, Paul Corrigan (Smoke and RAWS Coordinator, US Forest Service, Intermountain Region) walks viewers through the work required to conduct smoke modeling at scale. He describes the steps required to make informed smoke predictions on wildland fires. LANDFIRE is an input in the well-known BlueSky (https://tools.airfire.org/playground/…) Playground, which serves as a practical tool for fire and smoke practitioners.

Targeting the grass-fire cycle through soil-surface rehabilitation
2025-08-28 11:00
Webinar recording.
Biocrust sods (portable islands of lichens, mosses, cyanobacteria, and other organisms that form the cohesive soil communities known as biological soil crusts) are a novel technique for restoring critical soil systems in degraded landscapes. Because biocrusts can suppress the emergence of exotic plants, biocrust sods may also serve as living, ecologically beneficial fuel breaks in regions where the grass-fire cycle is driving more frequent fires. This presentation will offer preliminary results from studies in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts, where researchers have been testing the capabilities of these new restoration tools. Anyone interested in soil ecology, restoration, or fire will leave this presentation with a new appreciation for biocrusts and their potential as critical restoration partners in two American deserts.
Presenter: Keven Griffen, PhD Student, Northern Arizona University School of Forestry and Center for Ecosystem Science and Society

Fire Management Considerations in the Urban Interface
2025-09-03 08:30 - 10:00
Webinar recording.
Large loss wildfires are a growing concern in much of the central and western US, where wildfires originating or moving into the wildland-urban interface continue to impact high value residential and commercial infrastructure. As such, fire managers continue to face challenges in terms of reining in suppression costs and allocation of resources on large urban-interface fires, as well as mitigating millions of acres of hazardous fuels at a meaningful pace and scale.
Presenters:
Dave Calkin, Supervisory Research Forester, Rocky Mountain Research Station, USFS
Dave’s work is designed to improve risk-informed decision making through innovative science development, application, and delivery incorporating economics with risk and decision sciences. His research interests including: 1) risk assessment, 2) collaborative wildfire mitigation and response planning, 3) suppression effectiveness, and 4) risk informed decision making. He developed and leads the Wildfire Risk Management Science (WRMS) team within the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station.
Michael Tiller, Assistant Professor of Forest and Fire Management, College of Natural Resources, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Michael grew up in Northern California where he enjoyed an active outdoor lifestyle hunting, fishing, camping, and skiing in the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains and coastal redwoods. He enjoyed a 10-year career with Cal Fire serving as a Firefighter and Fire Apparatus Engineer. In 2006, he moved to College Station, Texas where he attended Texas A&M University and earned a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Science. After completing his B.S. degree, he attended Stephen F. Austin State University where he earned an M.S. degree in Environmental Science and Ph. D. in Forestry, both with a research focus on understory fuel flammability in forest and rangeland ecosystems. Michael also served as a Wildland Urban Interface Specialist for the Texas A&M Forest Service for 2-years where he was actively engaged with fuels management and prescribed burning. He recently accepted an Assistant Professor of Forest Ecology position at UW-Stevens Point where he leads the fire science program and serves as an adviser for the UWSP Fire Crew.

Fuel treatments in sagebrush and other semiarid uplands: The FIREss approach to improving mapping, planning, and effectiveness
2025-09-17 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording (51:43).
In this LANDFIRE Office Hour, Matt Germino, Supervisory Research Ecologist, Jake Price, Ecologist, Chad Kluender, Ecologist, and Cara Applestein, Ecologist (U.S. Geological Survey Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center) discuss fuel treatments and management challenges in sagebrush and other semiarid uplands of the western US. The USGS FIREss team (Fires, Invasives, Restoration of Shrub Steppe) discuss their techniques for adapting new technologies to manage invasive annual grass and wildfire risks at landscape scales. They discuss new approaches to modeling and monitoring that are built on LANDFIRE, RAP and other digital tools.

IFTDSS and LANDFIRE
2025-09-24 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording.
n this LANDFIRE Office Hour, Phil Graeve (Deputy Director, National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center) and Russ Parsons (Research Ecologist, USDA Forest Service, RMRS Fire Sciences Lab) discuss the looming fuels problem in the US – from the perspective of a fuels planner and fire management officer. The break down recent advancements in 3D fuels modeling, prescribed burn planning while discussing the inputs to these models. Check this Office Hour out to discover where the field of fuels modeling is headed…

Ecology and conservation of wildlife in the pyrocene
2025-09-25 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording (46:23)
For SAFE Connections September, our National SAFE Officers are joined by Dr. Gavin Jones, a Research Ecologist at the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico.

Science-management partnership to reduce human-caused large wildfire in the southwest: Lessons and paths
2025-10-22 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar recording (57:57)
The size and frequency of human-caused large wildfires continues to increase across the U.S. Southwest due to an array of evolving social and ecological conditions. Evidence-based prevention strategies are urgently needed, but foundational research that bridges geospatial and social data to inform these efforts is scarce. Achieving a substantial reduction in human-caused large wildfires also requires effective science-management partnerships that promote interventions grounded in best available science. In this webinar, speakers present an assortment of interconnected studies across Arizona and New Mexico that were developed in partnership with federal, state, and local prevention staff to address these needs. This includes key findings from GIS analyses, surveys, interviews, and focus groups with community members and practitioners that highlight existing successes and opportunities to strengthen human-caused wildfire prevention moving forward.
Presenters: Catrin Edgeley, Assistant Professor, Utah State University; Zander Evans, Executive Director, Forest Stewards Guild; Sarah Devenport, Human Dimensions Specialist, Ecological Restoration Institute; Gabe Kohler, Renew Forest Works LLC

SageCon Summit 2025
2025-10-28 - 2025-10-29
Conference recordings.
For the 10th annual SageCon Summit, we will spend two days in Ontario, Oregon focusing on sagebrush landscapes in Malheur County that burned in the recent 2024 fire season. In the morning of day 1, we will hear updates from SageCon and learn about the collaborative work of the Malheur County Rangeland Partnership. In the afternoon we will dive into the science of post-fire restoration and look at maps of the area we will visit in the field tour on day 2 through the lens of threat-based strategic conservation. The field tour will take us to a ranch that is managed as a mitigation bank and was partially burned in the Cow Valley fire, where we will explore post-fire treatments and fire recovery.

2025 Arizona Wildland Urban Fire Summit
2025-10-28 - 2025-10-30
View event webpage.
Held in Prescott on October 28-30, 2025, the Arizona Wildland Urban Interface Summit is a statewide event for wildfire preparedness, planning, and postfire recovery. Participants will discuss emergent strategies for landscape-scale wildfire planning and implementation, access professional networking opportunities, and leave with a renewed confidence on how to collaboratively address and manage wildfire concerns – before, during, and after the fire.
This year, the AZ WUI Summit will focus on home hardening mitigation strategies that matter and home insurance policy related to wildfire-structure fire conflagration, emerging technology for community assessment, statewide updates related to wildfire and safety, fuel treatment maintenance strategies, wildfire prevention and more.

NWCG RX-310 Course, December 2025
2025-11-01 08:00 - 2025-12-05 17:00
The NWCG RX-310 Course, Introduction to Fire Effects, will be offered this December 2025 in conjunction with the 11th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress in New Orleans, LA.
What: Introduction to Fire Effects (RX-310) at the Fire Ecology and Management Congress
Where: 11th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress, New Orleans, LA
Who: Open to wildland fire managers and practitioners
When: Nov-Dec 2025 with conference access Dec 1-6
Cost: $445 (or $395 with Association for Fire Ecology membership) plus a $40-$60 field trip fee
Course Description and Registration: RX310_Dec2025_NewOrleans
Flyer: PDF 2025_RX-310_Flyer or PNG

Forest Measurements and Pollinators
2025-11-05 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar registration.

Prescribed fire in winegrower country: How much smoke is too much?
2025-11-05 10:00 - 11:00
Webinar registration.
Prescribed fire plays a vital role in protecting California vineyards from the growing risk of wildfires. Still, vintners know firsthand the concerns that smoke can raise during sensitive periods of grape development. On November 5th, CAL FIRE, in partnership with CWI and regional experts, invites California winegrowers, fire practitioners, agencies, and anyone interested in smoke issues around the vintner community to join a special webinar focused on smoke awareness and communication. Together, we’ll share the latest information on prescribed fire practices, notification processes, and smoke management tools, while highlighting how local fire agencies and FireWise communities are working to strengthen coordination with the wine industry.
This interactive session will give California vintners the opportunity to hear directly from fire practitioners, learn strategies to minimize smoke impacts, and build connections with the people shaping prescribed fire efforts in the region. The conversation will also help set the stage for a larger in-person convening in spring 2026, where winegrowers and fire leaders will continue to work together on solutions that support both vineyard health and regional resilience.

Tree-rings reveal the legacy of Indigenous cultural burning in the Southwest
2025-11-05 11:00 - 12:00
Webinar recording.
Studying the influence of Indigenous people on ancient and historical fire regimes has been methodologically challenging. In the Southwest United States, well-replicated fire histories suggest that abundant lightning and suitable climate conditions drove frequent low-severity wildfires in dry pine forests independent of human activities even as ethnography provided hints that highly mobile indigenous populations used fire in myriad land use contexts. In this webinar Dr. Christopher Roos uses published and unpublished tree-ring fire history records from pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico to demonstrate that Indigenous foragers, pastoralists, and farmers influenced southwestern fire regimes in similar ways. This research shows that population size, culture, and economic organization were not limiting variables on the influence of Indigenous populations on fire regimes and that new methodological approaches may offer new insights into long histories of Indigenous fire stewardship that can contribute to discourse on contemporary fire management, fire-co-management, and restoration of traditional fire management practices.

Keeping your community engaged - Fire Adapted Communities webinar series
2025-11-05 11:30 - 12:30
Webinar registration.
Are you ready to help your neighborhood reduce its wildfire risk, but not sure where to start? This webinar is designed for established Neighborhood Ambassadors and community members who want to take the first steps toward organizing local wildfire preparedness efforts.
Join us to explore practical steps, discover helpful resources, and hear inspiring examples of how others have successfully mobilized their communities.
