Webinar
The Nation’s authoritative assessment of climate impacts, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Vol. II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States (NCA4 Vol. II) was released in November 2018. This presentation will address the impacts of climate change on land cover and land-use change and forests in the United States. Presenters will discuss the assessment’s findings, including adaptation actions, what we’ve learned since the previous assessment, and what we hope to understand better in the future.
Webinar recording.
The Science Framework for Conservation and Restoration of the Sagebrush Biome is a two-part volume on managing sagebrush ecosystems in the West that was developed by an extensive interagency team of scientists and managers. An overview of using the concepts of resilience to disturbance (ability to recover) and resistance to invasive annual grasses across three geographic scales (sagebrush biome, ecoregions, and local sites) to prioritize conservation and restoration actions is provided.
The webinar discusses how to use the Science Framework in management planning efforts, focusing on considerations like monitoring and adaptive management, climate adaptation, wildfire and vegetation management, nonnative invasive plant management, application of National Seed Strategy concepts, livestock grazing management, and wild horse and burro considerations.
Michele Crist, BLM National Interagency Fire Center, and Jeanne Chambers, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, present.
This 4-hour webinar focuses on invasive annual grasses such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), and ventenata (Ventenata dubia), which are devastating western natural areas and rangeland at a landscape scale. These grass invasions favor further invasions while eliminating desirable vegetation and wildlife habitat. Further impacts include:
- A continuous bed of fine fuel associated with an increase in frequency and intensity of rangeland wildfire
- Significant reduction or elimination of desirable perennial species
- Reduced forage quality for wildlife and livestock
- Increased risks for wildlife and pollinator species
- Resulting wildfires that are a threat to humans, wildlife, property and infrastructure
Speakers address all of these points, including current management tools for the “triple threat”, highlighting recent research conducted in multiple western states.
Access podcasts from Washington State University
The Art of Range podcast provides education through conversation with some of the brightest minds in rangeland management. We interview researchers, ranchers, and resource professionals to bring you extended discussion on topics that are of interest to all. A new episode will be released every two weeks, with several episodes on a general topic area. This podcasting project is funded by a grant from the Western Center for Risk Management and has specific learning objectives which will drive the topics list.
If you are a Certified Professional in Range Management through the SRM, you may claim continuing education units for these episodes (.5 or 1 CEU per episode) by following the instructions at the conclusion of the survey.
Webinar recording.
Over the last 30 years, in woodland and forested ecosystems across the southwestern US, there has been an increasing trend in fire activity. Altered land use practices and more recent changes in precipitation patterns and warmer temperatures are widely thought to contribute to departures in fire regimes toward more frequent and larger fires with more extreme fire behavior that threatens the persistence of the various forested ecosystems. We examined climate-fire relationships in these vegetation types in Arizona and New Mexico using an expanded satellite-derived burn severity dataset that incorporates over one million additional burned hectares analyzed as extended assessments to the MTBS project’s data and five climate variables from PRISM. Climate-fire relationships were identified by comparing annual total area burned, area burned at high/low severity, and percent high severity regionally with fire season (May-August) and water year (October-September) temperature, precipitation, and vapor pressure deficit (VPD) variables. The high severity indicators were also derived for each fire individually to see if climate-fire relationships persist at the scale of the individual fire. Increasing trends toward more arid conditions were observed in all but two of the climate variables. Furthermore, VPD-fire correlations were consistently as strong or more correlated compared to temperature or precipitation indicators alone, both regionally and at the scale of the individual fire. Thus, our results support the use of VPD as a more comprehensive climate metric than temperature or other water-balance measures to predict future fire activity. Managers will have to face the implications of increasing high severity fire as trends in climate toward warmer and drier conditions become an increasingly dominant factor in driving fire regimes towards longer and more intense fire seasons across the Southwest.
View webinar recording.
Wildfires are a natural element of many ecosystems and have a great impact on society by destroying property and sometimes by taking lives. In the United States alone, thousands of individual fires occur every year and the number of both burned hectares and destroyed buildings are higher than ever since recorded fire history. Six of the 10 fires with the largest losses of lives and homes of the 20th century occurred in the wildland urban interface (WUI), and all of them occurred within the last 20 years. Given that billions of dollars are being allocated to fuel management and fire suppression and that the main fire suppression goal is to protect people and property, it is necessary to understand the factors related to vegetation, terrain and spatial arrangement that contribute to building loss from wildfires, and examine nationwide spatial patterns of vulnerability and rebuilding.
Webinar recording.
With increases in the severity and duration of fire seasons, wildland firefighters are working longer shifts all across the west and are experiencing increased fatigue. In this webinar, Randy Brooks will present results from a survey of more than 400 wildland firefighters and a pilot study assessing sleep, fatigue, and body composition of nine wildland firefighters.
Dr. Brooks and environmental science doctoral student Callie Collins outfitted firefighters with Readibands – motion monitors that keep detailed data on sleep and activity. They report firefighters working in impaired conditions more than 42 percent of one month, and a slight gain in body fat and slight loss of muscle mass over the course of the season. Brooks will discuss the implications of these data and their application to helping make the wildland firefighting profession safer.
View webinar recording.
Join this webinar and robust discussion about innovative collaborations and case studies developed through a partnership between Trout Unlimited and the Forest Service. We will share examples of successful projects, tools such as partnership agreements, and how this model of volunteer monitoring can be expanded across other resource areas and throughout the nation to connect communities to their public lands and waters.
Projects and tools include:
- Stream Restoration Collaboration
- Angler Science
- Trout Unlimited’s Citizen Science Framework
- TU and USFS Master Agreement
- Forest Service Citizen Science Toolkit and Fund
With remarks from Trout Unlimited and Forest Service leadership:
Keith Curley, Vice President for Eastern Conservation, Trout Unlimited
Chris French, Deputy Chief for National Forest System, USDA Forest Service
This webinar seeks to inform participants about what to expect from LANDFIRE Remap products, and what has and has not changed from previous product offerings. We will discuss what we have learned since February 2019 when the products were made available to users in the Northwest, and how LANDFIRE resources can address specific fire and land management issues.
View webinar recording.
Is the risk of death the same when implementing “planned events”? What do the numbers we have as well as some specific events have say about that? Travis Dotson will provide prescribed fire practitioners a few specific elements to consider related to this topic and lessons available from both planned and unplanned fire events.