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Description: It is crucial for wildland fire professionals today to be technically competent in their jobs. What is less obvious and less understood is the cognitive competency needed for our professional job performance. Better understand your own thought processes and how we make decisions on emotional feelings, social inputs, and how developing a high level of Emotional Intelligence can affect risk decision job performance as well as our daily performance.
Presenter: Kelly Martin is a lifelong advocate for the wise use of fire on the landscape, former firefighter on engines, hotshot, helitack, and prescribed burn boss.
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In ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests of the western United States, prescribed burns are used to reduce fuel loads and restore historical fire regimes. The season of and interval between burns can have complex consequences for the ecosystem, including the production of pyrogenic carbon (PyC). PyC plays a crucial role in soil carbon cycling, displaying turnover times that are orders of magnitude longer than unburned organic matter. This work investigated how the season of and interval between prescribed burns affects soil organic matter, including the formation and retention of PyC, in a ponderosa pine forest of eastern Oregon.
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From building firelines to researching fire trends over time, fire management and science require great communication to be successful. Our panel will share their experiences and tips on how to effectively talk about fire to gain support and build a collaborative network. We’ll address your questions about fire science communication and discuss best practices for defining objectives, connecting with your audience, and tools/resources that can help along the way.
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The encroachment of pinyon-juniper woodlands into sagebrush habitat in the Great Basin Ecoregion of the western USA, represents a potential source of habitat degradation for sagebrush-associated wildlife species. To restore sagebrush habitat, managers are conducting large-scale conifer removal efforts within the Great Basin, particularly within Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) priority areas for conservation. Such largescale habitat modification efforts may result in unintended ecological trade-offs for wildlife. To investigate these trade-offs, we used community science data to develop species distribution models for two sagebrush and three pinyon-juniper associated bird species of conservation concern in the Great Basin. We evaluated the predictive performance of our models with an independent dataset of presence locations derived from systematic monitoring programs. We then simulated conifer removal across the Great Basin and mapped habitat gains and losses for our study species. Despite differing land cover associations, 31%-51% of suitable habitat for our study species coincided with Greater Sage-Grouse priority areas for conservation. Our conifer removal scenario increased suitable habitat by 6%-17% for sagebrush associates and reduced habitat by 11%-41% for pinyon-juniper associates. We identified areas of the Great Basin where conifer removal expanded habitat for sagebrush associates without concurrent habitat loss for pinyon-juniper associates. Our results provide guidance for conducting vegetation management in the Great Basin while addressing the habitat needs for multiple focal species. Our methods, which use freely available community science data and geospatial layers, can easily be transferred to other species and ecoregions.
This plan is intended to provide a shared vision for natural resource management and conservation in Nevada. The plan incorporates the existing “All Hands – All Lands” approach together with the recent Shared Stewardship Agreement signed by the State and Federal land management agencies in Nevada to guide the strategic direction for the management of natural resources across all lands in Nevada. To ensure this goal, NDF is asking natural resource management and conservation stakeholders and interested public to review and provide substantive comments that help advance the plan’s strategic direction.
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This study assessed the attractiveness and use by bees of 24 native plant species that are standard for revegetation projects (focal plants) on national forest lands in western Montana. Focal plants that had the highest visitation rate, attracted the most bee species, supported specialist bee species, and bloomed for extended periods across the landscape were considered “pollinator-friendly.” Our results suggest that Salix bebbiana, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, Lupinus sericeus, Rosa woodsii, Symphoricarpos albus, Erigeron speciosus, Symphyotrichum foliaceum, and Gaillardia aristata could create a seed mix that is effective for pollinator restoration on public lands. Pollinator-friendliness score cards are provided to allow land managers to select plant species to include in restoration mixes that benefit pollinators. Identifying mixes of pollinator-friendly native plant species that are available for restoration will allow land managers to both revegetate disturbed habitats and restore bee communities on federal lands. The methods developed in this project can be used to design seed mixes for pollinator restoration on other public lands.
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The global demand for restoration has increased orders of magnitude in the last decade, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes of native seed are required to feed this restoration engine. But where are all the seeds required by restoration going to come from? Wild seed resources continue to be depleted by habitat loss, land degradation and climatic change, and over-collection of seed from wild populations threatens to erode these resources further. Ethical seed sourcing for restoration now represents a core issue in responsible restoration practice. Solutions include the introduction of regulatory frameworks controlling seed sourcing from wild populations, the development of seed farming capacity and advancement of seed enhancement technologies and precision delivery systems reducing seed wastage.
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Strategically placed landscape area fuel treatments in the Sierra Nevada were put to the test in this study when the American Fire burned through previously treated areas. Both fire effects and initial post-fire conifer regeneration were investigated.
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This study quantified which reptile species may benefit from the protection of intact sage‐grouse habitat and which may be affected by recent (since about 1990) habitat restoration actions targeting sage‐grouse. Of 190 reptile species in the United States and Canadian provinces where greater sage‐grouse occur, 70 (37%) occur within the range of the bird. Of these 70 species, about a third (11 snake and 11 lizard species) have >10% of their distribution area within the sage‐grouse range. Land cover similarity indices revealed that 14 of the 22 species (8 snake and 6 lizard species) had relatively similar land cover associations to those of sage‐grouse, suggesting greater potential to be protected under the sage‐grouse conservation umbrella and greater potential to be affected, either positively or negatively, by habitat management actions intended for sage‐grouse. Conversely, the remaining 8 species are less likely to be protected because of less overlap with sage‐grouse habitat and thus uncertain effects of sage‐grouse habitat management actions. Our analyses of treatment databases indicated that from 1990 to 2014 there were at least 6,400 treatments implemented on public land that covered approximately 4 million ha within the range of the sage‐grouse and, of that, >1.5 million ha were intended to at least partially benefit sage‐grouse. Whereas our results suggest that conservation of intact sagebrush vegetation communities could benefit ≥14 reptiles, a greater number than previously estimated, additional research on each species’ response to habitat restoration actions is needed to assess broader claims of multi‐taxa benefits when it comes to manipulative sage‐grouse habitat management.
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This report provides examples of working partnerships can be found in a wide-range of management settings. There is no single formula for building a partnership and partnerships per se are not a panacea; however, through extensive research, we have found a set of characteristics that are common to most partnership success stories. They are described in this guide to be used as a practical reference for agency personnel and citizens who seek to improve collaborative efforts in local communities.
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