Webinar
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.
View webinar recording.
In this webinar, Dr. Kimberley Davis examined the effects of climate on post-fire conifer regeneration and subsequent seedling and tree growth. She and her colleagues focused on lower elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests to identify the climate conditions that are necessary for these species to regenerate and grow following fire. Their study found that changing climate conditions are making it increasingly difficult for tree seedlings to regenerate after fire, suggesting that fires may cause conversions to non-forest vegetation in the hottest and driest areas. Dr. Davis also discussed how disturbances that reduce canopy cover, such as wildfire, may alter microclimate conditions.
View webinar recording.
This presentation will focus on findings from JFSP-supported graduate research on post-fire conifer establishment following recent wildfires in eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Given shifting climate and wildfire regimes, managers and researchers seek information on forest resilience and recovery trajectories. Understanding establishment and growth rates post-fire is pertinent both to fuels management planning, in cases of overabundant regeneration, as well as to decisions surrounding replanting for sites with limited post-fire regeneration. The presentation will summarize current knowledge on the relative influence of site-level versus climatic factors affecting regeneration in western North America, and present data from the Blue Mountains ecoregion.
View webinar recording.
Whitebark pine is an iconic, five-needle, high-elevation pine whose existence is threatened by an exotic rust, mountain pine beetles, fire suppression, and climate change. Its distribution is limited to western North America and populations have declined 90% in recent decades. Whitebark pine is shade intolerant and depends on wildfire to reset the “successional clock”. Regeneration occurs mainly through germination of un-retrieved seeds planted by Clark’s Nutcrackers on burns following wildfires, however natural regeneration does not always follow wildfires or prescribed burning. Thousands of nursery seedlings are being planted across the landscape to compensate for losses, however survival rates are often low. This webinar will examine the potential use of native ectomycorrhizal fungi to improve seedling survival by describing the methods and results of greenhouse and field studies from Montana.
View webinar recording.
The increasing frequency and severity of fire and drought events have negatively impacted the capacity and success of reforestation efforts in many dry, western forests. Challenges to reforestation include the size, cost, and safety concerns of replanting large areas with standing dead trees, and high seedling and sapling mortality rates due to water stress, competing vegetation, and repeat fires that burn young stands. Resources for management are increasingly limited, reducing the capacity for young plantations to develop early resilience to fire, drought, and bark beetle stress. This talk summarizes recent research on the conditions under which current standard reforestation practices are no longer tenable, and provides suggestions on how these practices might be modified to improve their success.
View webinar recording.
Join the webinar that walks through processes to register for a Conservation Efforts Database User Profile and how we enter information using the ‘single-record’ entry option. Lastly, we’ll touch on the role of ‘approving officials’, how to select them within your agency or organization, and the associated responsibilities.