Uniting Fire Science and Natural Resource Management
The 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.
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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.
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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.
SFE’s Fire Lines newsletter received the 2020 Gold Award from the Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals (ANREP) for best Newsletter or Series of Articles. In 2019, SFE’s Lessons Learned from Hosting Learn-n-Burn Events webinar received the Gold Award for best Televised Conference – Video Conference – Webinar.
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Our partners at the Southeast Prescribed Fire Update have posted a brand new April issue of the Driptorch Digest. The e-newsletter includes regional prescribed fire news, funding opportunities, training resources and research. This issue includes additional curated resources that can provide the prescribed fire community with information that may support making fire management decisions during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
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Our partners at the Wildland Fire Management RD&A program recently published a new issue of their program newsletter (pdf). WFM RD&A are known for continuing to develop and host the IFTDSS software package.
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The NWCG Fire Environment Poster has a great visual summary of the factors that can influence fire behavior. Download the poster, print it, share it and use it as an instructional resource in your next RT-130 Refresher, workshop or class.
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The 3rd International Smoke Symposium (ISS3) is offering registration scholarships to participate in the virtual conference coming up April 20-24th. Check out the announcement and note the applications are due April 10th.
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