The New Normal: Wildfire in the 21st Century

The New Normal: Wildfire in the 21st Century, is intended for public use. It explains current issues as they relate to fire management and what managers are doing to help build resilient landscapes. Please share widely and help spread the message about positive fire management.

There is growing recognition that many forests need fire to thin dense vegetation that chokes forest health and creates favorable settings for more destructive fires. Also, climate change has produced hotter, drier weather across the West, and this has directly led to more extreme wildfire behavior over the past few decades. View the YouTube video here

April 2, 2015: Tamarisk invasion and fire in Southwestern desert ecosystems

Presenter: Gail Drus, St. Francis University Increased wildfire has been observed with the displacement of native cottonwood-willow (Salix and Populus spp.) gallery forests by invasive, non-native tamarisk (Tamarix spp.) in desert riparian zones of North America. Greater post-fire recovery of Tamarix relative to native species suggests a Tamarix fire trajectory where repeated fire excludes native …

San Carlos Apache – Building a Culture of Fire

For the past decade, the San Carlos Apache fire and forestry staff has been working to reintroduce fire to the landscape through an expanding prescribed fire and managed wildfire program. Stephen J. Pyne narrates this video describing the 2014 fire season on San Carlos when the new approach to fire was tested with the simultaneous management of multiple prescribed burns as well as a number of wildfire starts. One of those starts, the Skunk Fire eventually grew to over 73,000 acres.


January 21, 2015: The Ability of Wildfire to Act as a Fuel Treatment

Presenter: Sean Parks, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S. Forest Service In partnership with the Northern Rockies Fire Science Network, Sean will present the results from a JSFP-funded study that highlights the ability of wildfire to act as a fuel treatment. This study evaluated whether or not wildfires limited the occurrence, …

December 10, 2014: Working Across Fence Lines: Multi-jurisdictional planning and prescribed fire

Presenter: Eytan Krasilovsky, Forest Guild Fire cuts across administrative boundaries and our restoration work needs to as well. Whether it is multijurisdictional planning or multiagency prescribed burning, working across boundaries presents a unique set of challenges. In this webinar, Eytan Krasilovksy will discuss multijurisdictional NEPA planning in the Rio Trampas watershed and this year’s multiagency …

Silver Fire smoke

November 2014: Wildland Fire Smoke in the Air- What does it mean to me?

Thank you to all those who attended, making it a successful workshop! Due to videographer limitations, we were not able to record all of the presentations during concurrent sessions. November 6-8, 2014 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Program available here Click here to watch the associated webinar: “Smoke Forecasting Tools: A Case Study in Air Quality” …

Every Fire is an Opportunity to Treat a Landscape

On the afternoon of May 20, the Slide Fire was reported towards the south end of Oak Creek Canyon between Flagstaff and Sedona, Arizona. The canyon is steep and rugged – not the type of country that firefighters prefer for taking on a fire directly. After the initial threat to nearby homes passed, fire managers decided to use a confine-and-contain strategy, drawing a large box around the fire perimeter and using low-intensity burnout operations to rob the main head of the fire of fuel. This video describes the how fire officials managed the Slide Fire, and how the chosen tactics lessened negative impacts to the forest and watershed while providing for the safety of the more than 1,200 firefighters working the fire. The indirect tactics used on the Slide Fire are part of a national trend, wildfires being managed in ways that can benefit the landscape even while actively accomplishing suppression and protection objectives. National and regional fire experts discuss these changing trends and how fire management can be further improved to lessen negative impacts and actually create benefits for ecosystems.

Click here for an accompanying “Every fire is an opportunity” write up containing more detail.

A post-fire ponderosa pine seedling

February 2014: Fostering resilience in Southwestern ecosystems: A problem solving workshop

Fostering resilience in Southwestern ecosystems: A problem solving workshop Ecosystems and fire regimes are moving into new domains as a consequence of climate change, disturbance, and other causes. Fire professionals and land managers in the region are confronted with new fire regimes, fire effects, and ecosystem recovery trajectories following disturbance. To help fire and ecosystem …

February 13, 2014: Restoring Composition and Structure in Southwestern Frequent-Fire Forests: A science-based framework for improving ecosystem resiliency

Presenters: Richard Reynolds, Andrew Sánchez Meador, James Youtz, Tessa Nicolet, Megan Matonis, Patrick Jackson, Donald DeLorenzo, Andrew Graves (based on RMRS-GTR-310) Originally intended as pre-work for “Fostering resilience in Southwestern ecosystems: A problem solving workshop” on February 13, 2014. Watch the webinar recording.

January 15, 2014: Black Lake Prescribed Burn: Lessons Learned in Building Capacity for Prescribed Fire

Eytan Krasilovsky will share challenges and lessons learned surrounding the Forest Guild’s recent Black Lake Training Exchange. Forest Guild and the New Mexico State Land Office, with support from the Nature Conservancy’s Fire Learning Network, convened a grant funded training exchange to burn 900 acres of state trust lands in a wildland-urban interface in northern …