Fuels & Fuel Treatments
View guidebook.
This guidebook is to help the rancher and/or land manager use business planning and ecological monitoring to ensure the ranch or land is managed in a sustainable manner.
View synthesis.
This paper review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include the following: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and prescribed burning solve the problem? (4) Should active forest management, including forest thinning, be concentrated in the wildland urban interface (WUI)? (5) Can wildfires on their own do the work of fuel treatments? (6) Is the primary objective of fuel reduction treatments to assist in future firefighting response and containment? (7) Do fuel treatments work under extreme fire weather? (8) Is the scale of the problem too great? Can we ever catch up? (9) Will planting more trees mitigate climate change in wNA forests? And (10) is post-fire management needed or even ecologically justified?
View article.
Minimizing vulnerability of rangeland cores to annual grass conversion includes reducing exposure to annual grass seed sources, improving resilience and resistance by promoting perennial plants, and building capacity of communities and partnerships to adapt to changing conditions and respond to the problem with appropriate actions in a timely manner.
High school youth are invited to enjoy a week of fun, camping and learning about rangelands and natural resource management in Nevada. Camp will be held at the Timber Creek Campground providing a beautiful setting for learning. The purpose of this camp is to provide youth with the knowledge and understanding of how decisions are made about natural resources on Nevada’s rangelands.
The last camp was June 19-26, 2022 at Timber Creek Campground northeast of McGill, NV.
This camp is sponsored by the Nevada Section of the Society for Range Management. See https://nevada.rangelands.org/youth-range-camp/
for more details and application materials.
Contact Camp Director Ethan Mower with questions at emower@parks.nv.gov | 775-726-3564
Webinar recording.
Presented by: Matt Reeves
Estimating the number of animals that can be sustainably supported depends on numerous factors such as forage quantities, terrain, distance from water, and the type of vegetation being considered. Historically most approaches to conducting capacity estimates were limited by a paucity of spatially explicit data describing these factors. However, recent advances in remotely sensed data products and modelling ideas have improved our ability to refine these estimates and do it consistently across all lands which has significant implications for future land management plans such as Allotment Management Plans and Annual Operating Instructions (AOI) for federally managed grazing allotments. In this presentation we demonstrate application of our modernized modelling approach and present results of our recent assessment of wild horse and burro capacity in California.
Webinar recording.
FTDSS is becoming a go-to tool for fuels planning across interagency partners. With its all-access web-based approach, IFTDSS makes fuels management planning accessible to fire practitioners at all levels. From viewing project areas on a user-friendly map interface to completing a full blown Quantitative Wildfire Risk Assessment, IFTDSS has something for everyone. IFTDSS contains fire behavior models, reference data sets, mapping tools, comparison workflows, and summary reports useful for prescribed fire planning, treatment prioritization, and NEPA analysis and reports. With upwards of 2800 user accounts, IFTDSS is being used across all federal agencies as well as state and private partners, NGOs, and Universities. This webinar will provide an overview of what the application can do as well as some examples of how it is being used in the field.
Meeting website.
The two-day event, hosted by Idaho Governor and WGA Chair Brad Little, featured the Western Governors and their specials guests in public conversations about western drought, cross-boundary land management, cybersecurity, clean energy, broadband deployment and telehealth expansion.
Virtual conference proceedings.
The Forest Health in Oregon: State of the State conference occurs every-other-year and is meant to summarize forest health issues in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The focus is on major forest insect and pathogen activity and emerging issues, as well as weather phenomena such as drought and heat waves, and of course fire. We seek to inform foresters, forest industry, agency forest managers, small woodland owners, forestry and natural resources extension volunteers and agents, and anyone interested in forest health in Oregon, about these important issues that influence forest health. In 2022 we are also focused on tree decline issues regarding western redcedar, big leaf maple, and Douglas-fir.
Webinar recording.
This webinar will include presentations and interactive breakout sessions to explore implications and opportunities for forest collaboratives:
Larry Chambers, Change Management and Communication Lead, U.S. Forest Service
Jake Donnay, Director, Legislative Affairs, U.S. Forest Service
Steve Moyer, Vice President of Government Affairs, Trout Unlimited
Bill Imbergamo, Executive Director, Federal Forest Resource Coalition
View article.
We conducted 53 interviews across four case studies in the western United States where federal land management agencies and cooperative actors are working together to accelerate the implementation of prescribed fire to understand the range of actors and associated roles they play. We found that interviewees identified 67 different organizations spanning local to national scales that played a variety of roles to support prescribed fire implementation, mainly communications, prescribed burn labor, fundraising, burning expertise, and burning on neighboring lands. Many actors did not serve in intentional bridging roles, but they filled key roles in the governance networks necessary to implement prescribed fire.