The expansion of the grass-fire cycle in the deserts of North American is driving ecosystem level transformation from patchy desert scrub to invasive grassland. A novel fire regime in the Sonoran Desert is forcing a new approach to land management. Unprecedented large-scale fires in recent years, especially in 2005 and 2020, have been driven by …
EPISODE SUMMARY Welcome to our third episode of our Fire in the Southwest series! In this episode, we spoke with Jon Martin, who is the Director of Native American Forest and Rangeland Management Programming at the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University. Jon spent three decades working in forestry before retiring, and now uses his extensive …
EPISODE SUMMARY What is it like to watch vegetation type-conversion in real time? How are invasive grasses changing the ecology of the desert and broader Southwest? What’s being done to protect and restore Southwest ponderosa pine forests? This episode with Tonto National Forest fire ecologist Mary Lata dives into the fire regimes of the Southwest, …
An overview of a changing landscape. The expansion of the grass-fire cycle in the deserts of North America is driving ecosystem level transformation from patchy desertscrub to invasive grassland. A novel fire regime in the Sonoran Desert is forcing a new approach to land management, where there are currently more questions than answers. What is …
Explore maps of the most notable fires in Arizona and New Mexico 1909*-2021. Shown are the fires listed in our Wildfire Season Overview products as well as any fire over 100,000 acres. All of the maps are georeferenced and can be put on Avenza or a similar app to be utilized on a mobile device! *The available …
Read more “Map: Most Notable Fires in Arizona and New Mexico”
IN A NUTSHELL: In the second webinar in a series on invasive grass-driven changes in dry desert systems, presenters will discuss their findings on the fire dynamics of the 2020 Bighorn Fire in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, AZ to better understand the changing nature of fire in desert systems which are increasingly experiencing conversion …
Read more “Grassification and Fast-Evolving Fire Connectivity and Risk in the Sonoran Desert”
Presenter: Dr. Jens T. Stevens, National Program Lead for the Wildland Fire and Fuels Research, USDA Forest ServiceDate: January 19, 2022 12pm Mountain Standard Time The increasing incidence of large wildfires with extensive stand-replacing effects across the southwestern United States is altering the contemporary forest management template within historically frequent-fire conifer forests. While management of …
Read more “Postfire Management in Frequent-Fire Conifer Forests”
Presenter: Stephanie Mueller, Northern Arizona UniversityDate: July 29, 2021 11am AZ / 12pm MDT Fire is an essential component in restoring and maintaining a healthy forest. However, historic land use and decades of fire suppression has excluded fire from millions of forested hectares across much of the western United States, including the Grand Canyon National …
Read more “Fire-weather Drivers of Severity and Spread: Example from Grand Canyon”
Presenters: Mike Stoddard, Ecological Restoration Institute and Matt Tuten, USDA Forest ServiceDate: Thursday April 15, 2021 11am AZ/12pm MDT This webinar will share research on forest structure and understory vegetation responses to three restoration treatments (thin/burn, burn, and control) over 10 years on a mixed-conifer site in southwestern Colorado. Forest density, canopy cover, and crown …
Read more “Restoration Treatments: Reducing Fuels and Increasing Understory Diversity”