Tools and Trainings
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The Wildfire Resilience Index (WRI) is an interactive tool designed to support communities and landscapes living with wildfire in 12 Western US states, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory (see image on the right). Wildfire is natural and inevitable across the western United States and Canada. Living with it requires a shared understanding of how systems-both ecological and human-resist harm and recover after fire. Together, these abilities define resilience.
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Invasive annual grasses (IAG) pose one of the most significant and rapidly expanding threats to rangeland health across the western United States. These exotic grasses include cheatgrass, medusahead, and ventenata, and when they overtake rangelands, they alter fire regimes, reduce habitat quality, and diminish long-term productivity. Developing effective management strategies and treatment prescriptions requires an understanding of the degree of invasion in an ecological context, including site potential, competitive balance with perennial grasses and forbs, and overall productivity. The Invasion Severity Index (ISI) maps and web app provide a simple, interactive platform to help conservation planners and land managers prioritize and plan invasive annual grass treatments across the sagebrush biome. Using cutting-edge Rangeland Analysis Platform (RAP) 10-meter resolution data, ISI maps depict five invasion levels linked to specific management strategies and actions. The ISI assesses the severity of annual grass invasion relative to perennial forb and grass cover and bare ground, providing an ecologically grounded framework for prioritizing management and aligning treatment techniques with site resilience and recovery potential. Other reference layers and features allow users to understand landscape context, consider trends through time, visualize specific vegetative thresholds, and generate time series charts.
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To effectively manage fire, land and fire managers need detailed, current local information – for example, the amount of burnable material present, fuel moisture levels, winds, temperatures, and terrain changes across time and space. Managers also need these data to decide where, when, and how to treat a landscape while balancing costs and benefits, projected wildfire risk, and potential impacts.
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The frequency and severity of wildfires are changing around the country. To understand their impact on the landscape, federal agencies and states are conducting fire needs assessments. Fire needs assessments help fire stakeholders understand where, what type of, and how much fire needs to occur to reduce the destructive effects of wildfire and restore or maintain ecosystem health and resiliency.
Fire is a natural and necessary process in many ecosystems, but its role can vary widely depending on landscape conditions, ecological goals, and management history. In some places, fire is missing where it’s needed. In others, it’s occurring too frequently or with damaging severity. Understanding where and how fire should be applied—or avoided—is essential for effective landscape management.
A Fire Needs Assessment (FNA) helps land managers and ecologists evaluate the ecological role of fire across their landscapes. It provides a spatial framework for identifying where fire can support ecological health, and where it may be causing harm.
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Article describes development and use of the database.
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Maps, data, and other resources for natural resource practitioners.
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As a general rule, humans love trees. It’s not surprising — there’s a lot about trees to like! However, across the globe, vast swaths of the landscape are naturally treeless. In fact, they make up 40% of all terrestrial ecosystems. These meadows, grasslands, and shrublands are some of our most productive and important ecosystems, and they provide society with fertile grazing lands, open space and world-class recreation, and a remarkable diversity of unique wildlife.
Unfortunately, these grassy biomes are among the most imperiled globally, threatened by many factors including tree expansion. In the American West, conifer encroachment in core sagebrush areas results in altered fire regimes, reduced forage productivity, depleted water resources, habitat loss for sagebrush-dependent wildlife, and more.
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The USU Restoration Consortium has partnered with the NRCS West National Technology Support Center and the BLM Aquatic Resources Program to develop a standardized Low-Tech Process-Based Restoration training series. These courses are pending incorporation into AgLearn and DOI Talent. Students will also receive continuing education units (CEUs) and a professional transcript from Utah State University.
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With this training we have the opportunity to learn about Native History in the US, and the resulting trust responsibility of the federal government as a byproduct of colonization. The training then dives into Tribes present day, where sovereignty and self-determination are explored and the third module leads us into culture and identities of Indigenous Peoples across what is now known as the US, with a learning objective to “offend Natives 50% less of the time AND engage with tribes 25% more effectively!” Training background and content summary from the Nature Conservancy.