Tools and Trainings
Two researchers discuss findings from studies on how wildfires affect local economies across the U.S. west, from onset to recovery and beyond.
This video provides a brief overview of a new approach to examine the potential health effects that wildland firefighters may experience working on wildland fires. This effort is a collaboration between the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health (NIOSH), the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service.
As you will see in the video, a NIOSH team actually goes into the field on a wildfire in Idaho to test members of the Sawtooth Interagency Hotshot Crew on potential impacts to their overall health, including effects to their hearts, lungs, kidneys, and hearing.
Fire researchers discuss the return of fire to western U.S. landscapes in the context of wildfire history.
Sagebrush rangelands once covered nearly 250 million acres in western North America. Today, this landscape has been reduced to half its original size and is rapidly shrinking. Fire is a primary culprit and is fueled by annual invasive grasses. These rangelands help drive our nation’s economy through energy, recreation, and livestock production and are home to critical regional water resources. Equally important, these lands are wildlife meccas and provide habitat for some 350 species.
This video that captures the beauty of sagebrush country and provides information on cheatgrass’s serious threat. Intermountain West Joint Venture provided additional quality video on cheatgrass.
The Gunnison sage-grouse has withstood millennia of changes in Western Colorado. But now the species faces extinction as the invasive plant cheatgrass invades its last refuge—the remote Gunnison Basin. Basin residents now have a choice to make. Do they take drastic steps to combat cheatgrass? Or do they let cheatgrass-fueled wildfires snuff out a beautiful, bizarre and iconic species?
Hosted by Matt Reeves, using Microsoft Teams, click the “Watch on web instead” link to view.
ARS scientists at the Great Basin Rangelands Research Unit in Reno, NV, have found success using pre-emergent herbicides as part of an integrated management plan to control cheatgrass, an aggressive, invasive weed from central Asia.
Access WildfireSAFE
WildfireSAFE provides simplified access to an advanced suite of fire weather and fire products. The Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS) is a USDA Forest Service, Fire and Aviation Management-supported system that was developed by Forest Service fire behavior researchers as an avenue to increase the utility of remote sensing and spatial data in fire management. It is an integrated, web-based resource to support fire management decisions. It provides multi-temporal and multi-spatial views of fire weather and fire potential, including fuel moistures and fire danger classes from the US National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), Keetch-Byram and Palmer drought indices, lower atmospheric stability and satellite-derived vegetation conditions. It also provides access to fire potential forecasts from 24 hours to 7 days. Wildfire SAFE integrates WFAS with federal agency incidents to provide targeted fire weather information on an incident basis.