Maintaining resilience can be challenging in the best of times, and the current circumstances can make it even more difficult. While these tips and strategies are offered as a way to improve well-being and resilience, if you find that they are not enough, seek social support, mentoring, or counseling.
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National Preparedness Level Raised to PL5
The National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group, or NMAC, has elevated the National #PreparednessLevel to 5 (PL 5), due to significant fire activity occurring in multiple geographical areas, an increase in incident management teams being committed, and heavy commitment of shared resources to large fires nationally.
Given the continuing hot and dry weather and the increase in initial attack and large fires in the western U.S., the decision to move to PL 5 depicts the complexity that fire managers are encountering to assure that adequate firefighting resources are available for protection of life, property and our nation’s natural resources.
This is the earliest we have gone to PL 5 in the past 10 years. In 2002, PL 5 was set on June 21 and in 2008, PL5 was set on July 1.
PL 5 is the highest level of wildland fire activity. Several geographic areas are experiencing large, complex wildland fire incidents, which have the potential to exhaust national wildland #FirefightingResources.
Continue ReadingProPublica Piece Covers Florida Sugarcane Burning
A new in depth piece from ProPublica investigates issues related to air quality as a result of sugarcane burning in Florida.
Continue ReadingWebinar Recap and Recording: Southeast Climate Update + New Climate Normals
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Forecast Report on Longleaf Pine Cone Crop for 2021 and 2022
Dr. John Willis and Dr. Dale Brockway of the US Forest Service Southern Research Station in Auburn, Alabama have released their 2021-2022 regional longleaf pine forecast report. This report includes current cone counts and conelet observations from 11 sites ranging from Louisiana to Florida and up to North Carolina. Fire and land managers can use these data to inform plans to maximize natural regeneration opportunities in mature longleaf stands. Download the full report here. For questions about the report contact Dr. John Willis ([email protected]).
Continue ReadingNCPFC/CAFMS Annual Meeting Registration Now Open
Registration for the NCPFC/CAFMS Annual Meeting/Workshop is now available at: https://apfire.wixsite.com/
The annual meeting and presentations will be held August 18, 2021 in Morganton, NC at the Foothills Conference Center. This meeting will be hybrid, with both in-person and virtual options. A field trip will be held on August 19, 2021. The meeting will follow the most up-to-date state, federal and local Covid-19 guidance at the time of the meeting. More details including the agenda can be found on the registration page.
Continue ReadingGetting Our Heads Around the New Fire Environment
A recent article by Joint Fire Science Program Board Chair Dana Skelly discusses how to improve risk assessment and on the ground choices in the face of a wildland fire environment that grows increasingly extreme due to climate change.
Continue ReadingAmerica’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative Releases 2020 Range-wide Accomplishment Report
America’s Longleaf Restoration Initiative released its 2020 Range-wide Accomplishment Report celebrating a decade’s worth of accomplishments and significant progress towards restoring longleaf pine. Despite a turbulent 2020, ALRI’s dedicated partners proved resilient and recorded over 1.9 million acres of accomplishments ranging from new longleaf establishment, prescribed burning, land protection, and maintenance activities
Read the press release and report here.
Continue ReadingFire Facts Story Map
The Northwest Fire Science Consortium has created a new story map covering topics including wildland fire behavior, fuels management, and humans and fire.
Continue ReadingFuel and Fire Tools Modifier Available
For many years, people have used the FEPS 1.0 outputs as inputs to the PC versions of VSMOKE, VSMOKE-GIS, and PC HYSPLIT atmospheric dispersion models. Many prescribed burners have found these tools helpful to examine possible downwind smoke impacts when planning and implementing prescribed fires.
Recently, Bill Jackson completed a new version of the software interface (it is now 64 bit compatible) so that a person can modify Fuel & Fire Tools (FFT) input files, complete a new FFT analysis, and the FEPS output from FFT still serves as input to the three atmospheric dispersion models. The attached User’s Guide will provide you with a full description of how the new software interface, called SmokeTools, works.
If you are interested in trying SmokeTools then please email Bill at [email protected] and you will receive an invite from DropBox to download two zip files that need to be unzipped to your PC. Once unzipped, then you will be able to install the software (see Appendix A in the attached manual for all of the software that needs to be installed).
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