IFTDSS webinars recordings
2018-03-23 09:00 - 10:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
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Developing Treatment Alternatives
Treatment comparison is one of the more complex parts of the IFTDSS app. There’s no doubt that comparing landscapes is tricky business. If you find yourself scratching your head or staring at the screen a lot, join us to help take some of the mystery out of landscape comparisons! Recorded 13 April 2018.
Modeling and Reports
The beauty of IFTDSS is that nearly everything is exportable as a report or summary. With a fairly large number of items on each report it’s easy to get lost. Join us to take some of the mystery out of IFTDSS reports and reporting. Recorded 30 March 2018.
Landscapes and Editing
Trying to figure out how to edit landscapes in IFTDSS or just interested in picking up some tips and tricks to do it better? This webinar is for those trying to learn how to edit landscapes in IFTDSS to better represent their area! Recorded 23 March 2018.
IFTDSS Map Studio Demonstration
In this webinar we demonstrate using Map Studio for finding an area of interest, adding landscapes and model runs, and working with shapes and shapefiles. Recorded 16 March 2018.
Navigating IFTDSS
This demonstration highlights the overall layout of IFTDSS. It includes the Planning Cycle, file storage in My Workspace, Map Studio interface, and Modeling Playground. Recorded 9 March 2018.
IFTDSS Demonstration and Discussion
This demonstration of IFTDSS, and the following discussion, was a presentation to the Fire Science Exchange Network on September 21, 2017.

Smoke tools and information for prescribed fire and wildfire
2018-03-27 10:00 - 11:00
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The science of wildland fire smoke modeling and the tools and information available are dramatically different from what they were 10 years ago. Satellite systems, computing power, social media, and investments in basic research and research delivery such as made by the Joint Fire Sciences Program (JFSP) and NASA are some of the components driving this, as well as the need for information and guidance when widespread smoke impacts occur to large populations such as experienced this past Summer across much of the western US. This webinar provides 1) an overview of the various web-based smoke forecasting systems available in both the US and Canada, and a background of the science and information that goes into these systems, 2) directions to a one-stop-shop of particulate matter air quality monitoring data from both permanent monitoring networks, and monitors deployed during wildfires, 3) an overview of satellite information and products tailored to smoke, 4) directions on where to go to do your own smoke modeling, and finally 5) an overview of the Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program and the Air Resource Advisors deployed as part of the program to Incident Management Teams.

Scaling up collaborative restoration: What can be learned from participatory landscape simulation modeling?
2018-04-03 10:00 - 11:00
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It is widely recognized that forest restoration needs to be scaled up to landscapes. This webinar described the findings from the project “Go big or Go Home?” in the eastern Cascades of Oregon. The goals of the project were to analyze how forest collaboratives and Forest Service managers can plan and manage at landscape scales, and determine how scientific research, participatory simulation modeling, and innovations in collaborative participation can contribute to the process.

Management considerations of pollinating bats on energy farms (Talk 1) and Utility right-of-way management that supports pollinators (Talk 2)
2018-04-04 09:00 - 10:00
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Talk 1: Dave Waldien, Affiliated Scholar, Christopher Newport University: Management Considerations of Pollinating Bats on Wind and Solar Farms
Talk 2: Peter Beesley, Vegetation Program Manager, Expert – Pacific Gas and Electric Company: Utility Right-of-Way Management that Supports Pollinators and Safe Energy Transmission

Herbicides for cheatgrass: What works?
2018-04-04 11:30 - 12:30
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This webinar covers existing products that are effective and how they are applied in different situations. It will also introduce new emerging herbicides. Richard D. Lee, Integrated Pest Management Specialist, BLM National Operations Center, presents.
This webinar was the second in our 2018 Webinar Series: Moving the Needle on Cheatgrass: Putting What We Know into Practice.

Grazing to maintain perennial grasses and reduce nonnative annuals
2018-04-11 11:30 - 12:30
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This webinar discusses the benefits of altering timing of grazing to reduce annuals and maintain perennial bunchgrasses. It also discusses the detrimental impacts of repeated spring defoliation on perennials. Kirk Davies, Lead Rangeland Scientist with USDA ARS, presented.
This webinar was the third in our 2018 Webinar Series: Moving the Needle on Cheatgrass: Putting What We Know into Practice.

Fire, smoke, and air quality
2018-04-23 12:00 - 13:00
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This webinar discusses various agricultural and forestry fires and their impacts on air quality, including smoke and other air emissions. Basic Smoke Management Practices (BSMPs) will be discussed as means to minimize air quality impacts from prescribed fires.

Capitalizing on strategic opportunities: Examples from the field
2018-04-25 11:30 - 12:30
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Brian Mealor, Associate Professor and Director of the Sheridan Research and Extension Center, UW, discusses strategic opportunities where land managers can intervene to move the needle on cheatgrass. It describes the level of invasion and management strategies applicable to each. Then, Mike Pellant, Ecologist, Retired BLM, discusses post-fire opportunities, cheatgrass die-off areas, and the myths and realities of dormant season targeted grazing.
This webinar was the fourth in our 2018 Webinar Series: Moving the Needle on Cheatgrass: Putting What We Know into Practice.

Making it work: How Michigan National Forests modified LANDFIRE data for local use
2018-05-01 09:30 - 10:30
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This webinar gives a brief introduction to multiple LANDFIRE datasets and then explore how two National Forests are working to tweak LANDFIRE data to better meet their needs. We will conclude by sharing resources and ideas that may help you think through modifying LANDFIRE or other similar datasets for your use.

BehavePlus - Updates and changes
2018-05-09 11:00 - 12:00
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Webinar presented by Faith Ann Heinsch, S&K Global Solutions, RMRS Missoula Fire Lab
The webinar described major changes from version 5 to version 6, showed sample Runs demonstrating these changes, provided suggestions for calculating surface fire behavior using BehavePlus v6, described how changes in BehavePlus affect NWCG courses that use this program (e.g., S-490; RX-301/341), and provided ways to get additional information.

Ecologically based invasive plant management: Lessons from the area-wide demonstration project
2018-05-09 11:30 - 12:30
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This webinar discusses the process as well as take home messages from area-wide demonstration projects on cheatgrass reduction. Roger Sheley, USDA ARS, presented.
This webinar was the last in our 2018 Webinar Series: Moving the Needle on Cheatgrass: Putting What We Know into Practice.

Adapting wildfire management to 21st century conditions
2018-05-16 10:00 - 11:00
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This Critical Issues webinar explores recent trends in wildfires and changes in contributing factors / drivers of these hazards and features case studies of wildfire policy and management strategies in the western and southern United States.

Cheatgrass, medusahead, and ventenata: Symposium and field trip
2018-05-30 08:00 - 2018-05-31 15:00
View Part 1 (2:12) and Part II (2:08) recordings of this symposium.
This special half-day webinar symposium provides an in-depth review of three invasive grasses (cheatgrass, medusahead, ventenata) in the Western US.

Targeted grazing applied to alter fuels and reduce fire behavior metrics in shrub-grasslands
2018-05-30 11:30 - 12:30
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This webinar discusses how targeted grazing can reduce fuels to prevent wildfire in shrub-grasslands. Chris Schachtschneider, Eva Strand, and Scott Jensen, University of Idaho, present.

Empowering private landowner conservation
2018-07-12 08:00 - 17:00
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This webinar highlighted the importance of private land in species conservation efforts, innovative ways to address conservation finance, and the incentives that work for private landowners. Moderator: Chris West, Director, Rocky Mountain Regional Office of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Panelists: Amos Eno, Executive Director/President, Resources First Foundation; Jeff Morgheim, Founder and Principal, Edge Strategic Consulting, LLC; Lesli Allison, Executive Director, Western Landowners Alliance. This webinar is one in a series for the “Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative,” the Chairman’s Initiative of Wyoming Governor and Western Governors’ Association Chairman Matt Mead.

Multi-species management and desert landscapes
2018-07-12 08:00 - 17:00
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This webinar illuminated the challenges and opportunities posed by landscape-level species management in the desert southwest. Moderator: Matt McKinney, Director of the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Policy at the University of Montana. Panelists: Alexa Sandoval, Director, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish; John Swett, Program Manager, Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program; Jim deVos, Assistant Director, Wildlife Management, Arizona Game and Fish Department; Bill McDonald, Executive Director, Malpai Borderlands Group. This webinar is one in a series for the “Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative,” the Chairman’s Initiative of Wyoming Governor and Western Governors’ Association Chairman Matt Mead.

Critical habitat and invasive species
2018-07-12 08:00 - 17:00
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This webinar examined how critical habitat designations are influenced by invasive species. Moderator: Chuck Bonham, Director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Panelists: Dr. David Sweet, Yellowstone Lake Special Project Manager, Wyoming Trout Unlimited; Matt Morrison, Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Northwest Economic Region; Chris Crookshanks, Native Aquatics Staff Specialist, Nevada Department of Wildlife. This webinar is one in a series for the “Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative,” the Chairman’s Initiative of Wyoming Governor and Western Governors’ Association Chairman Matt Mead.

Species conservation funding
2018-07-12 08:00 - 17:00
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This webinar examined current methods of funding species conservation efforts, as well as challenges and opportunities to leveraging additional funding for conservation of at-risk and endangered species. Moderator: Timothy Male, Executive Director at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center. Panelists: Christy Plumer, Chief Conservation Officer, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership; Virgil Moore, Director, Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Gary Frazer, Assistant Director for Endangered Species, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This webinar is part the Species Conservation and ESA Initiative.

8th Annual Sage-Grouse Initiative Workshop - Lessons and photos
2018-07-13 08:00 - 17:00
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More than 135 conservation partners recently met in Boise, Idaho during the Sage Grouse Initiative’s 8th annual workshop. This year’s workshop focused on wildfire, weeds and rangeland restoration.
Over the course of two days we heard from ranchers, firefighters, researchers, local non-profits and public land managers about the amazing results that come from working together locally to achieve a shared vision: healthy sagebrush rangelands for people and wildlife.

Home and landscape wildfire defense lessons learned from the 2017 California wildfire season
2018-07-16 08:00 - 17:00
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How could have so many homes and businesses burned so quickly in the Wine Country Fires? While the landscape can be the fuse, the homes really can be the most burnable part of the landscape. For this webinar we’ll talk about key lesson that can be learned from these northern California fires and how we can help our homes and landscapes to become more resilient to wildfires. This webinar will bring forward information about fire preparedness, building design, construction and maintenance in with an emphasis identifying and managing the fuels near our homes (e.g. combustible wood mulches used in landscaping, lawn furniture, leaf accumulations, dry landscape plants, etc.), especially in the 5 feet immediately adjacent to our homes.

Rangeland Analysis Platform: A tool to help manage, monitor western rangelands
2018-09-25 09:00 - 10:00
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The Rangeland Analysis Platform (RAP) is a free, online tool that helps landowners and natural resource managers track vegetation through time and plan actions to improve America’s grazing lands. The RAP can be used to provide strategies to improve productivity of grazing lands, manage weeds, mitigate impacts of wildfire and drought, and benefit wildlife habitats. Powered by Google Earth Engine, RAP merges machine learning and cloud-based computing with remote sensing and field data to provide the first-ever annual cover maps of rangeland vegetation. This new platform allows people to view trends in rangeland resources at an unprecedented blend of space (from the Great Plains to the Pacific Ocean), time (1984 to present), and scale (at the ranch, watershed, or county level). Designed to be combined with local knowledge, the RAP helps users better understand vegetation change through time to aid in conservation planning and outcome evaluation. This webinar will describe the innovative breakthrough in mapping vegetation cover and demonstrate RAP applications.

Full community costs of wildfire
2018-09-27 11:00 - 12:00
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This webinar was originally presented August 29, 2018 11am AZ/12pm MDT by Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics.
As wildfires increase in size and severity, the costs to protect homes and lives similarly rise. Yet protecting communities represents a relatively small portion of the total costs of a wildfire—other short- and long-term impacts yield a variety of costs that often go unrecognized. In an analysis of five case studies—the Hayman (2002), Old, Grand Prix, and Padua Complex (2003), Schultz (2010), Rim (2013), and Loma fires (2016)—suppression costs averaged nine percent of total wildfire costs; additional short-term expenses and long-term damages accounted for 91 percent of total wildfire costs. Nearly half of all wildfire costs are paid at the local level by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and homeowners. The remaining wildfire costs are paid at the state and federal level, or are paid by a combination of local, state, and federal organizations. Overall, short-term expenses such as suppression, relief aid, evacuation services, and home and property loss comprise around 35 percent of total wildfire costs. Long-term damages, which can take years to fully manifest, account for approximately 65 percent of total wildfire costs. Although wildfire costs greatly vary depending on factors within the built and unbuilt environment, increasing trends in climate change and development patterns favoring high-wildfire-risk areas suggest a parallel rise in total wildfire costs. Planning new communities and developments with consideration of wildfire risk is one way to accommodate growth while living alongside wildfires.

Fire and archaeology: Working together to protect cultural resources during wildfire and prescribed fire
2018-10-09 08:00 - 17:00
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Land managers are challenged to protect cultural resources within the context of reintroducing fire on the landscape. Positive relationships and partnerships are essential to effective management.

Modeling and mapping the potential for high-severity fire in the West
2018-10-10 11:00 - 12:00
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The ecological effects of wildland fire – also termed the fire severity – are often highly heterogeneous in space and time. This heterogeneity is a result of spatial variability in factors such as fuel, topography, and climate (e.g. a map of mean annual temperature). However, temporally variable factors such as daily weather and climatic extremes (e.g. an unusually warm year) also may play a key role. We conducted a study in which statistical models were produced describing fire severity as a function of live fuel, topography, climate, and fire weather. On average, live fuel was the most influential factor driving fire severity, followed by fire weather, climate, and topography. The statistical models we produced were then used to generate maps depicting the probability of high-severity fire, if a fire were to occur, for several ecoregions in the western US. These maps can potentially be used by land management agencies to prioritize hazardous fuel reduction treatments. This webinar pertains to all mountainous regions of the western US but will slightly emphasize the southwestern US.

Gambel oak management symposium
2018-11-13
Part 1 recordings.
Part 2 recordings.
Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii) is a widespread species found throughout the US Southwest and southern Rocky Mountains. While the species has been widely studied in Arizona and New Mexico, comparatively little is known about Gambel oak at the northern extent of its range (Colorado, Utah, southern Wyoming). Research in this geographic region is particularly important given substantial differences in growth form across the species’ range (tree vs. shrub), and because potential habitat for Gambel oak is likely to spread northward under future climate scenarios. In this webinar, we will discuss the current state of knowledge on the ecology and management of Gambel oak in the southern Rocky Mountains, with a focus on silviculture, wildfire, and post-fire.

Evaluation of burn mosaics on subsequent wildfire behavior, severity and fire management strategies
2018-11-15 13:00 - 14:00
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The Reburn Project was motivated by a need to better understand wildfires as a type of fuel reduction treatment and to assess the impacts of fire suppression on forested landscapes. The original JFSP task statement (Influence of past wildfires on wildfire behavior, effects, and management) was created to inform the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy and to address how past wildfires influence subsequent wildfire spread and severity as well as to evaluate how past wildfires may support different fire management strategies. Our study focused on three study areas, located in the inland Pacific Northwest, central Idaho and interior British Columbia. Each study area was centered on a recent, large wildfire event in montane, forested landscapes.We first evaluated fire-on-fire interactions between past wildfires and subsequent large fire events (see Stevens-Rumann et al. 2016). Next, we created a landscape fire simulation tool that allowed us to explore the impact of fire management on the patterns of forest vegetation and fuels across landscapes. To do this, we created an iterative tool that uses historical ignition and weather data to evaluate potential burn mosaics compared to actual pre-wildfire landscapes under different wildfire management strategies.

Prescribed fire policy barriers: Findings from a JFSP project
2018-11-27 11:30 - 12:30
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USU Forestry Extension and the Southern Rockies Science Network present this special webinar: Prescribed fire is an essential management tool for restoring and maintaining fire-dependent ecosystems; however, land managers are unable to apply prescribed fire at the necessary levels. Past surveys have identified a range of policies and regulations that managers say limit their ability to conduct prescribed fire. We are conducting a project investigating barriers to prescribed fire across the West for the BLM and the US Forest Service. Our goals are to identify the origin and range of interpretation of perceived policy barriers (i.e. whether these reside in law, agency guidance, culture, or individual discretion) and characterize the opportunities and mechanisms that are available to overcome barriers at various scales. The first phase of our project involved a legal analysis and interviews across the 11 Western states with BLM and Forest Service fire and fuels managers and state-level air quality regulators. We report on the diversity of regulatory approaches, policy barriers, and strategies for overcoming challenges across the West, based on our legal review and interviews. While air quality regulation limits managers’ ability to conduct prescribed fire, it is only one of many issues that managers say affect their programs; other significant challenges include capacity limitations, a lack of incentives to increase accomplishments, and individual risk aversion.

Burning piles- Effects of pile age, moisture, mass, and composition on fire effects, consumption, and decomposition
2018-11-28 11:00 - 12:00
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Millions of acres of fuels reduction treatments are being implemented each year in the fire adapted forests of the US. Typical these fuel reduction treatments target small diameter trees for removal producing large amounts of unmerchantable woody material and elevating surface fuel loadings. Often this material has no market value and is piled by hand or with heavy machinery and burned on site. We studied replicated experimental pile burns from two locations (Wenatchee, WA and Santa Clara, NM) over three years. We examined the effects of time since construction (i.e., pile age) and burn season (fall and spring) on fuel bed properties, combustion dynamics, fuel consumption, and charcoal formation for hand-constructed piles in thinned ponderosa pine-dominated sites. The webinar will also touch on pile decomposition rates and unplanned fire in areas with piled fuels.

Lessons learned from Learn-n-Burn events
2018-11-29 10:00 - 11:00
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“Learn and Burn” workshops are an excellent way for private landowners and others to gain hands-on burning experience and knowledge from expert mentors. This webinar will provide some lessons learned from coordinating these events, and tips to putting one on in the future. Participants will be provided with a template checklist, examples of past agendas, ideas for potential partners and funding opportunities, suggestions on how to measure program impact, and successes from past events. Are you thinking of planning one of these events?

Use of small unmanned aircraft on wildfire incidents
2018-12-12 11:00 - 12:00
Webinar recording.
Unmanned Aircraft, commonly called “Drones,” are being used more and more for public safety, research, etc. Falling prices, rising capabilities, and a favorable regulatory framework are all fueling this growth. This webinar looks at actual, real-world, Wildfire missions where these aircraft are being used successfully, and diver into their advantages and limitations.
