Restoration Treatments: Reducing Fuels and Increasing Understory Diversity

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 …

Risk Management Prioritization

Presenter: Dr Melanie Colavito, Ecological Restoration InstituteDate: December 8, 2020 12pm Mountain Time The Ecological Restoration Institute recently completed a project analyzing the use and adoption of wildfire risk assessment and fuels treatment prioritization methods and products—broadly referred to here as decision support tools (DSTs)—by federal land managers. There is a need to demystify the …

Wildfire-Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American landscapes

Presenters: Jonathan Coop, Western Colorado University; Sean Parks, USDA Forest Service; Camille Stevens-Rumann, Colorado State UniversityDate: November 18, 2020 11am Mountain Time Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A …

Policy Change & Wildland Fire Management

Date: October 22, 2020 11am AZ/12pm MDTPresenter: Jesse Young, Post-Doctoral Scholar, Northern Arizona University In 2009, new guidance for wildland fire management in the United States expanded the range of strategic options for managers working to reduce the threat of high-severity wildland fire, improve forest health and respond to a changing climate. Markedly, the new …

Good Fire

EPISODE SUMMARY Living with fire means different things to different people. In this episode Cally and Collin talk with Jeremy Bailey and Pepe Iniguez about how prescribed fire and managed fire might help us create a pathway that leads us living with fire. We talk about some of the barriers and some interesting marketing strategies. …

Resilience in National Forest Planning

Presenter: Jesse Abrams, University of Georgia Date: September 9, 2020 11am AZ/12pm MDT Recent policies including the Cohesive Strategy and the 2012 NFMA planning rule emphasize restoration of landscape resilience as a way forward for living with fire on national forestlands. But what does resilience mean, what does it take to plan for resilient landscapes, …

Southwest Vegetation Type Conversion: A workshop summary

by Rachel M. Gregg, EcoAdapt, and Laura A. Marshall, University of Arizona Increasingly common large and severe fires in the Southwest are now often followed by vegetation type conversions (VTC) where once-dominant vegetation fails to return to its pre-fire state. Case studies have documented abrupt transitions from forests to shrublands or from shrublands to grasslands. …

After the Fire: Learning from Burned Areas in the Southwest

In the spring of 2019, several partners teamed up with the Burned Area Learning Network to visit coordinate a series of three field trips across the Southwest. Scientists, researchers, and land managers came together to visit burned areas of the Boundary Fire (2017) and Pumpkin Fire (2000) in Arizona, the Las Conchas Fire (2011) in …

Oct 23, 2019: Large-scale forest restoration stabilizes carbon under climate change

Presenter: Lisa McCauley, The Nature Conservancy Date: October 23, 2019 11am AZ/12pm MDT Higher tree density, more fuels, and a warmer, drier climate have caused an increase in the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires in western U.S. forests. There is an urgent need to restore forests across the western United States. To address this need, …