By Josh McDaniel
How do we measure the effects of fuel treatments on a potential fire? How do we treat fuels to reduce risk while adhering to varying and often conflicting management restrictions? Until recently the tools just didn’t exist to answer these types of questions.
By David Calkin and Krista Gebert
New risk management tools are changing approaches to fire management and economists are playing a key role.
By Bob Zybach, Michael Dubrasich, Gregory Brenner, John Marker
What are the actual costs of a wildfire? A more complete accounting would include environmental, health, economic, and social impacts.
By Josh McDaniel
The Grand Mesa National Forest in western Colorado has never had a fire like the Coal Creek Fire, a 1,485 acre blaze creeping up the slopes of the Grand Mesa near Kannah Creek.
By Josh McDaniel
This past spring, I visited the aftermath of a debris flow in Amago Creek on the La Jolla Indian Reservation outside of San Diego—one of the many large flows that impacted the watersheds hit hard by the southern Calfornia fires in October, 2007.
By Josh McDaniel
I am Fred Nelson, tribal member of the La Jolla reservation – tribal treasurer for the tribe. To start out with we were devastated by the 2007 fires – October fires – that came through and burned about 94% of the reservation. We lost 59 structures.
By Josh McDaniel
For Georgia forestry and fire officials, 2007 will also go down as one of the busiest in history. A complex of fires in and around the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge—eventually named the Georgia Bay Complex—consumed over 500,000 acres.
By Josh McDaniel
Toby Richards, a fire management officer for New Mexico's Gila National Forest, realized that something was changing in climate patterns when he had to check on a fire a few years back that had ignited in mid-winter above 9,000 feet.
By Josh McDaniel
AMR is many things—it is the latest buzzword, it is also a substantive change in wildland fire policy, it is letting a fire burn akin to wildland fire use, it can also be going direct in an aggressive effort at fire suppression. Still confused?
By Josh McDaniel
The Figueroa RAWS (Remote Automated Weather Station) sits at 3200 ft on a grassy knob in the mountains above Santa Barbara. The small unit is bristling with antennas, sensors, solar panels, and various weather measuring devices, making it appear like a stationary and earthly version of a Mars rover.
Audio Slideshow-
The Zaca Fire
By Josh McDaniel
Fire behavior modeling, geospatial analysis, remote sensing, and weather forecasting, are available today that would have been inconceivable ten or even three years ago.
Fact Sheet-
Fire Behavior Modeling and Decision Support Systems
By Josh McDaniel
Seven years of endless meetings, exhaustive planning, repetitive training, and a controversial and unprecedented set of prescribed burns were all justified when a large, intense wildfire was stopped in its tracks.
Fact Sheet-
Fire Behavior Modeling and Decision Support Systems
By Josh McDaniel
On July 23 and 24, 2006, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California was hit by a series of lightning strikes that started multiple ignitions across the Forest. Joe Millar, the fire management officer for the Forest, realized that a number of these fires had potential to become serious problems.
Fact Sheet-
Fire Behavior Modeling and Decision Support Systems
By Josh McDaniel
Sitting around tables in the darkened room, a group of federal land managers, environmentalists, local residents, contractors, and timber industry representatives stare intently at paper maps and projected GIS maps lining the side walls and the front of the room.
Fact Sheet-
Fire Behavior Modeling and Decision Support Systems
By Josh McDaniel
The ponderosa pine forest on the mountain was a “dog- hair thicket,” small trees in need of thinning. However, there was a private property in-holding nearby, and Stevenson was not completely ready to commit to a “go” decision for Fire Use.