Uniting Fire Science and Natural Resource Management
The latest news from the Association for Fire Ecology includes a number of important items including:
Last fall the Southern Fire Exchange team worked to narrow and identify the top fire science needs for the Southeastern U.S. Using feedback from surveys, evaluations, and our advisory board, we worked with our principle investigators to develop a series of short documents that articulate some of the most pressing fire science needs for the region. These documents were shared with the Joint Fire Science Program to guide their fire science funding priorities for the country. Read more about this process and our top research needs topics for the region. The Joint Fire Science Program maintains an online database of fire science research needs that are national and regional in scope. This process provides an example of how the JFSP regional Fire Science Exchange Network can bridge the gap between fire science and management by identifying and elevating the most pressing and important research topics for funding.
A longleaf pine ecosystem restoration area in northwest Florida. Southern Fire Exchange photo by David Godwin.
2020 Top Five Southeastern Fire Science Research Needs
The Southern Fire Exchange, University of Georgia Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Environmental Protection Agency, North Carolina State University, and the Southern Regional Extension Forestry collaboratively produced a new full-color 50 page guidebook for smoke management in the South. Intended for private landowners, the 2020 Smoke Management Guidebook for Prescribed Burning in the Southern Region will also be useful for students, extension agents, NRCS agents, prescribed burn associations, and prescribed burners looking to increase their smoke management knowledge. At this point, the guidebook is only available in digital (pdf) format.
The new smoke management guidebook includes full color illustrations, tables, and diagrams for understanding critical smoke, weather, and air quality concepts.
The Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils and the National Association of State Foresters just published the 2020 National Prescribed Fire Use Report. This latest report provides an annual snapshot of forestry and rangeland prescribed fire use by U.S. state and region. Starting with 2020, the report will be updated annually to capture the annual variations in prescribed fire use that come from weather and other factors. The 2012, 2015, and 2018 reports can be found here.
Host: US Forest Service Southern Research Station, the Southern Fire Exchange and the University of Florida.
Presenter: Louise Loudermilk, Ph.D., US Forest Service Southern Research Station
Abstract:
Hardwood-cypress swamps, or ephemeral wetlands, that typically burned less frequently form a spatial matrix with their more frequently burned neighbors, pine flatwoods, causing unique patterns of low to high intensity fires, variation in smoke emissions and overall ecosystem carbon stores in these southeastern forests. At the Osceola National Forest in Florida, our group examined the effects of different long-term management practices (prescribed fire, harvest, no fire) during extreme fire weather across these two vastly different, yet intertwined ecosystems using a simulation model. This presentation will discuss how future extreme fire weather may alter future fire conditions, and how we can spatially optimize prescribed fire and timber harvest to manage wildfire risk.
Registration Required: https://ufl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_v2N_twSBRBS4-d8xAxx9hg
Continue ReadingThe recordings from two recent Southern Fire Exchange webinars are now posted on the Southern Fire Exchange YouTube Channel webinar archive. “The Case for Prescribed Fire Science” with Dr. Morgan Varner from Tall Timbers Research Station and “Longleaf Pine Forest Patch Dynamics” with Dr. Kevin Robertson also from Tall Timbers Research Station were presented in April and May of 2020.
Two interesting US EPA research webinars will take place Wednesday, May 20th and Thursday, May 28th presenting new research on smoke data visualization and the health effects of smoke / PM2.5 . Members of the fire management and fire research communities of the Southeast may be particularly interested in these two webinars given the importance of smoke management for Southeastern prescribed fire programs.
EPA Tools and Resources Webinar: Wildland Fire Community Engagement and Data Visualization Tools
Wednesday 05/20/2020 3:00PM to 4:00PM EDT
Summary
“This presentation will highlight two wildland fire smoke and health projects. Smoke Sense is a crowdsourcing, citizen science app which engages the public to broaden awareness of wildland fire smoke locally as well as health protective measures and behaviors. This presentation will share findings from the past two wildfire seasons including community engagement and data visualization tools. The Smoke Ready Communities project offers a model and framework to help communities improve their response. It supports collaboration and capacity building and also fosters preparedness and response to wildfire smoke episodes. This presentation will share a solutions-driven approach for helping reduce the public health burden of smoke intrusion at the community level. Participants will learn about how these projects can integrate a community capacity lens with resources specifically related to wildland fire smoke, air quality and health.”
Air Quality and Healthy Hearts: Progress and Remaining Challenges Webinar
Thursday 05/28/2020 2:00PM to 3:30PM EDT
Summary
“This webinar provides an overview of newly published research by EPA scientists and their colleagues that helps fill key knowledge gaps. The findings, published in leading scientific journals, offer new insights into the progress made to protect at-risk individuals with chronic health problems. The research also identifies remaining environmental health challenges, such as determining risks faced from sustained exposure to elevated PM2.5 from wildfire smoke, which is being observed due to more frequent and larger wildland fires in the United States.”
Additional information about this webinar can be found here.
Continue Reading
The April Southern Fire Exchange webinar “The Case for Prescribed Fire Science” with Dr. J. Morgan Varner from Tall Timbers Research Station is now archived on the Southern Fire Exchange YouTube Channel. The slides from the presentation (pdf) can be accessed as well. Thank you all for joining us and we hope you’ll join us for one of our upcoming fire science webinars.
Continue Reading
The Southern Fire Exchange recently contributed to a new informational guide from NC State Extension titled Wildland Fire Programming – A Guide for Extension and Outreach Professionals. The guide includes tips for hosting prescribed fire demonstrations, fire festivals, field tours and prescribed fire related workshops. Natural resource and forestry Cooperative Extension agents will certainly want to check out this guidebook as well as anyone who works in public outreach related to fire.
SFE also has several webinars related to this topic:
The brand new Wildfire Risk to Communities interactive map and data visualization tool provides individuals, communities, leaders, agencies and cooperatives seamless wildfire risk information for all 50 states. The interactive browser-based map data and reports are available at the community, county and state levels. The tool is intended to provide citizens and decision makers with information that can help them to understand wildfire risk based on hazards and vulnerabilities. This information can assist with scenario planning, fuel treatment prioritization and a wide array of fire adapted community related processes. Wildfire mitigation specialists will definitely want to check out this resource.
