June 14, 2017: Recovery & adaptation after wildfire across the United States, 2009-2011

Date: June 14, 2017 11am AZ/12pm MDT Presenter: Miranda H. Mockrin, USFS Northern Research Station Becoming a fire-adapted community that can live with wildfire is envisioned as a continuous, iterative process of adaptation. In eight case study sites across the United States we examined how destructive wildfire affected altered progress towards becoming fire-adapted, focusing on the …

Fire moss as a tool for post-wildfire ecosystem restoration

This factsheet is a result of graduate research and has not been peer reviewed beyond graduate committee members. by Chris Ives Increasingly large, frequent, and severe fires across the western United States are creating difficult restoration challenges for land managers. Despite the wide use of current fire restoration techniques, many studies have shown little to …

A post-fire ponderosa pine seedling

January 18, 2017: Patterns of conifer regeneration following high severity wildfire in ponderosa pine-dominated forests

Date: January 18, 2017, 12pm MST Presenter: Marin Chambers, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, CSU The past two decades have witnessed fires of increased severity in southern Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine – dominated forests. Marin will discuss results from an ongoing project that is characterizing post-fire conifer regeneration in severely burned patches, and how regeneration characteristics are governed …

Megan Poling research

August 24, 2016: Increasing trends in high severity fire in the southwestern USA from 1984-2013

Presenter: Megan Poling, PhD Student, Northern Arizona University In the last three decades nearly 5 million hectares have burned in all vegetation types in the Southwest and the largest fires in documented history have occurred in the past two decades. However, trends in severity, or how fires are burning have not been well documented in forest …

High Severity Fire: Response and Uncertainty

Do high severity burns lead to conversion to new forest types or a shift from forests to shrublands or grasslands? How do wildlife respond to changing habitats? And, finally, what do these changes tell us about how these ecosystems will respond to climate change? We visited the sites of the 2000 Pumpkin Fire and 2003 Aspen Fire, and talked to researchers who have been studying how forests and wildlife respond to high severity burns. View the YouTube video here.


November 2015: Fire effects: Restoration of watersheds and springs

This 1-day workshop/session was held in conjunction with the Society for Ecological Restoration Southwest Chapter Conference. It provided participants with information on trends in fire effects on watersheds, streams, and springs; offered tools to respond to these impacts before and after fires; and fostered discussion on next steps for restoration practitioners. The main focus was …

September 2015: Immediate post-wildfire effects on bats in the Southwest

Presenters:  Erin Saunders Northern Arizona University and U.S. Forest Service, and Carol Chambers, Northern Arizona University Ponderosa pine forests in the southwestern U.S. have increased in density over the last 100 years which has dramatically increased the size and frequency of wildfires. Although wildfires rarely kill animals, they have immediate consequences to bat populations by drastically …

May 12, 2015: The Southwest Fire Season: 2014 Overview and 2015 Outlook

Presenter: Zander Evans, Forest Guild and Chuck Maxwell, Predictive Services Please join us for a webinar to review last year’s fires and look ahead toward conditions for this year. Dr. Zander Evans will present an overview of the 12 largest fires in the Southwest during 2014. He will share summaries of forest types and burn severities …