Webinar
Webinar recording.
Description: Among the values at risk from wildfire are community drinking water supplies, as forested watersheds on public land are often a primary or significant source of drinking water. In some places across the West, watershed protection partnerships have formed to address this threat by bringing together the stakeholders of these watersheds for collaborative planning and investment in source water protection. This webinar will explore the concept of watershed protection partnerships and how they span organizational boundaries for collective action to address wildfire and other risks. We will offer lessons learned from how these partnerships have been implemented in Colorado and New Mexico, and direct implications and applications for communities in Oregon.
Presenters: Heidi Huber-Stearns, University of Oregon; Emily Jane Davis, Oregon State University
Webinar recording.
Description: Join a panel of practitioners from several realms (governmental, contracting, and non-profit) to learn how they are adapting field work plans to reduce risks to practitioners and community members in the time of COVID 19. As we are all learning and adapting to this strange new world together, we’ll wrap up with time for participants to share their own ideas and ask questions of panelists and each other.
Presenters are the following SER-NW chapter board members:
Jeff Barna an ecologist with a wide-ranging research background focusing on plants and wildlife, as well as wetland and riparian ecology. Jeff currently works for Environmental Science Associates, an employee-owned natural resource management and restoration design company. He has worked throughout the U.S., but is now happily based in the Northwest, and lives in Portland. Jeff is very passionate about engaging young people, particularly those interested in becoming ecologists because of the importance of supporting the next generation of restoration scientists.
Ben Peterson an aquatic weed biologist with the King County Noxious Weed Program in Seattle, WA, where he has worked since 2009. Over the years he has worked on restoration projects with several non-profit, for profit, and government organizations (including an internship with the Aldo Leopold foundation where he got to sleep in The Shack for a week). Ben received a MS from the University of Washington in 2008.
Regina Wandler, Stewardship Manager at Skagit Land Trust, Regina is responsible for monitoring and managing over 8,000 acres of conservation land across Skagit County. She began serving on SERNW’s board in 2015 while completing her Masters in Environmental Horticulture at the University of Washington, and is a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner In Training (CERPIT).
Description: Webinar discusses the vulnerability of southwestern landscapes to climate change. Climate change has created new challenges for resource managers with broad and often complex effects that make it difficult to accurately predict and design management options to minimize undesirable impacts.To address a gap in climate vulnerability assessments available for the Southwest, Friggens and Triepke developed a modeling study for all major upland ecosystem types at spatial and thematic scales applicable to local administrative units and landscapes.
Vulnerability was determined by comparing the pre-1990 climate with the 2090 forecasted climate for all lands in Arizona and New Mexico. Results suggest the majority of lands in Arizona and New Mexico are highly vulnerable to future climate impacts, but that vulnerability varies considerably by location and ecosystem type.
Presenters: Megan Friggens, RMRS ecologist and Jack Triepke, FS southwestern region
Description: Post-fire seeding has long been used to control erosion and suppress problematic invasive annuals like cheatgrass in dryland areas of the Great Basin. It is also a potential tool for restoring pre-fire vegetation by assisting successional processes. Non-native perennial plants have been widely seeded on account of their establishment ability, competitiveness and forage value, but may pose barriers to natural vegetation recovery. Seeding native species is a more sensible choice if restoration is a long-term objective, but there is a question of both cost and whether native species will be as effective as non-natives in outcompeting invasive annuals.
Presenters: Francis Kilkenny and Jeff Ott, RMRS research biologists
Description: Webinar discusses safety tools for wildland firefighters. Safe and effective wildland firefighting operations require access to real-time, actionable intelligence about the wildland fire environment. Historically, this information has been difficult to collect and disseminate and failed to provide access to the best-available science to inform decision making. It describes the Severe Fire Danger Index (SFDI) and show how it is related to historical wildfire events that heavily impacted communities and firefighters and present a prototype for a simple, mobile and web-based platform that can provide real-time access to SFDI, fuels, terrain and values-at-risk for every fire in the country.
Presenter: Matt Jolly, RMRS ecologist
Description: Forest planning and management efforts, including both forest plan revision and comprehensive river management planning, require extensive public engagement. Social science approaches that are practically applied by practitioners within the public engagement process are limited. Armatas and colleagues have developed a “social vulnerability” protocol focused on peoples’ human-nature relationships that can support both decision-making and public relations.
Presenter: Chris Armatas, RMRS research social scientist
Description: Due to loss of natural ecosystems and biodiversity around the world along the past decades, international initiatives are being developed to establish a foundation for the restoration of diverse ecosystems, prioritizing ecosystem biodiversity and resilience while also recognizing impacts on rural livelihoods and carbon storage. As programs have become more refined, a shift from revegetation with available material to using native plant materials of known genetic origin has been underway, and achieving increasing priority at an international level. Through research and collaborative partnerships, on local, regional and international levels, and between public and private sectors, approaches are being developed that addresses the challenges in using native genetic plant material in ecological restoration. Four study cases from different geographic locations and climatic conditions were selected to demonstrate the successes in using native genetic plant material, developing a baseline for native genetic resource management, and meeting challenges according to every ecosystem’s limiting factors. In Jordan’s desert ecosystem a developed native seed strategy has majorly improved seedling quality and post-planting survival rate. In the tropical ecosystem of Guinea Conakry, the major challenge is to identify best seed collection times and seed handling techniques to improve seed germination and propagation of native seedlings through seeds for the restoration of the Bossou corridor. Within Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, an emphasis is being made on the development of a traceability system for native genetic plant material used in restoration projects, considering the genetic variability within native species, starting with Cedrus atlantica. In Lebanon, considering the diverse ecosystems, a scheme for the selection of native plant material is developed within every restoration project, for dryland, riparian or forest ecosystems.
Speaker: Karma Bouazza, Lebanon Reforestation Initiative
Description: Oregon State University’s Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Fire Program and its partners present a webinar series on Wildfire Preparedness and Prevention in Oregon. The last of three webinars focuses on fire adapted communities (FAC) and what it means to be Ready, Set, Go! This webinar is 1.5 hours and the last 30 minutes will include a live demonstration from a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member showing us what’s in their go packs!
Presenters:
Alison Green, Oregon: Living with Fire
Jennifer Dietz, International Fire Chiefs Association
Aaron Crawford, CERT member
Dave Busby, Fire Emergency Planning Manager
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Description: Ecological restoration efforts are being implemented in the context of a rapidly changing climate, which poses a new set of challenges and uncertainty. Climate-smart restoration is the process of enhancing ecological function of degraded, damaged, or destroyed areas in a manner that makes them resilient to the consequences of climate change. The presentation will provide an overview of Point Blue’s climate-smart restoration framework and demonstrate how it can be used to inform planning and design for various restoration projects, drawing on examples from various riparian and wetland systems in California.
Speaker: Marian Vernon is the Sierra Meadow Adaptation Leader at Point Blue Conservation Science, where she works with partners to catalyze climate-smart meadow restoration and land conservation in the Sierra Nevada.
The use of livestock to control undesirable vegetation is growing in popularity. However, less is known about the pros and cons of this technique in comparison to other management methods, such as herbicide, cutting, and burning. In this webinar, Dr. Katherine Marchetto, post-doctoral associate at University of Minnesota, discusses her research on the effects of goat browsing on the invasive shrub common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and on overall plant diversity and composition. Dr. Marchetto focuses on two studies: 1. Experimental research assessing the viability of invasive buckthorn seeds after passing through goat digestive tracts, and 2. A meta-analysis of 59 studies about the use of grazing animals in vegetation control. Gavin Deming, executive director of Allegheny GoatScape, and Jake Langeslag, owner of Goat Dispatch, LLC, share their observations from the field and provide webinar attendees with practical information on grazing goats to control invasive species.