Archived Webinar

Rapid advancements in wildland fire modeling are promoting innovations in how we characterize and map wildland fuels. Before these models can be widely used, more research on fuel characterization and mapping methods is needed to support3D model inputs. The 3D Fuels Project is characterizing surface and canopy fuels on pine-dominated sites in the southeastern and western United States and western grasslands that represent fuels commonly characterized for prescribed burning. Through this project, researchers are developing a library of tools and datasets to leverage multi-scale estimates of 3D fuel structure and consumption that can be used directly within models of fire behavior and smoke production.

The idea of using sensors to remotely measure things is not new. Aerial photos taken from hot air balloons were first proposed as a tool for mapping streets in the 1850s. In1941, a US Forest Service ranger developed a technique for mapping fuels with aeria lphotos. Recent advances in remote sensing have dramatically increased the amount of spatial information that can be generated for a given area. This webinar will look at some of the ways the Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team at the Seattle FireLab is using remote sensing to measure fuels and fire behavior. We’ll also discuss howthis information can improve our capacity to model fires.

Researchers from Colorado State University, the University of Oregon, and the University of Georgia are conducting a five-year study to understand how efforts that began as part of the US Forest Service Shared Stewardship Strategy develop over time, based on interviews with federal and state agency leadership, land managers, and other partners and stakeholders. 

Presenters: Courtney Schultz, Colorado State University Chad Kooistra, Colorado State University Heidi Huber-Stearns, University of Oregon Jesse Abrams, University of Georgia

In this work, we present a regional screening of Oregon and Washington communities to map wildfire evacuation vulnerability, assessed as the combination of wildfire hazard(burn probability and fire line intensity) and road network quality (assessed by simple geographic summaries of the paved road networks surrounding each town). Many places with relatively constrained road networks also coincide with high wildfire hazard. We hope that through this work, we can identify general geographic characteristics of communities that indicate greater wildfire evacuation vulnerability and help identify places that would benefit from more detailed analysis to aid in emergency response and preparedness. Alex Dye is a research associate at Oregon State University's College of Forestry, where he studies wildfire risk and climate change in the Western United States

Led by Susan Pritchard, Nick Povak, and Rebecca Lemons. 

This webinar offers an overview of overview of research to better understand drivers of fire severity, whats leading to really large wildfire events, and what these fires are leaving us to manage in the future. 

This webinar presents findings on factors that facilitate or frustrate cross-boundary wildfire risk management. 

Among the values at risk from wildfire are community drinking water supplies, as forested watersheds on public land are often a primary or significant source of drinking water. In some places across the West, watershed protection partnerships have formed to address this threat by bringing together the stakeholders of these watersheds for collaborative planning and investment in source water protection. This webinar will explore the concept of watershed protection partnerships and how they span organizational boundaries for collective action to address wildfire and other risks. We will offer lessons learned from how these partnerships have been implemented in Colorado and New Mexico, and direct implications and applications for communities in Oregon. 

Courtney Schultz associate professor of forest and natural resource policy at Colorado State University and director of the Public Lands Policy Group and Heidi Huber-Stearns associate director of the Ecosystem Worksforce Program at the University of Oregon presented on "Strategies for increasing Rx fire application on federal lands from case studies in the US West" watch the video on our YouTube channel.

Jessie M. Dodge in the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Fire Sciences, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID presented on "Effects of scale on remote sensing assessments of burn severity in a ponderosa pine forests." Watch the video on our YouTube channel.

Stephen Pyne, emeritus professor at Arizona State University presents "Winter isn't Coming. Prepare for the Pyrocene." Watch the video on our YouTube channel. Closed captioning available.