2024 Hands-On Fire Science Workshop

During April, the Tallgrass Prairie and Oak Savanna Fire Science Consortium co-hosted the 2024 Hands-On Fire Science Workshop. Dunn Ranch Prairie in northwest  Missouri provided the outdoor classroom, with prescribed burn operations led by The Nature Conservancy Missouri Chapter.

Fire ecology methods taught during the workshop were divided into three modules - fire weather, fuels, and fire intensity. Participants practiced taking weather with the belt weather kit and Kestrel instruments, learned about and practiced methods for sampling grassland fuel load and live fuel moisture, and deployed thermocouples and data loggers optimized for grasslands.

Through a mix of instruction and prescribed fire operations, participants gained experience integrating research methods with burn operations. Below, a thermocouple array and data logger are visible in the foreground at a small reconstructed prairie at Dunn Ranch Prairie.

A mix of mentorship and learning took place as crews worked on burn operations.

With pre-burn briefings, radio communication on the firelines, and post-burn reviews, particpants learned about the human dimensions of integrating fire science and rx fire.

Unit preparation and burn operations were led by The Nature Conservancy Missouri Chapter's fire program, with participants working as TNC volunteers or through MOUs with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Missouri Department of Conservation

Applications for the April 2025 workshop will open this fall. Use the interest to sign up for updates and notification of the application process opening: https://forms.gle/z62CcoG6hdD6rBxJ7

JOB: Permanent Prescribed Fire and Fuels Technician Position

The Great Lakes Fire Management Zone, based at Indiana Dunes National Park, is hiring a GS-9 Prescribed Fire/Fuels Technician.

According to the National Park Service, the Great Lakes Fire Management Zone is comprised of 13 National Park Service sites located in the Midwest region. The zone represents many different areas and ecosystems, all of which require different methods and plans for safely managing fires within the parks. Managed out of Indiana Dunes National Park, the Great Lakes Fire Management team is responsible for fire operations, safety, and education throughout the zone. Visit the Great Lakes Fire Management home page at https://www.nps.gov/indu/learn/nature/great-lakes-fire.htm

This position will be responsible for the prescribed fire program, as well as coordinating WUI work, structure assessments and responding to wildfires in the zone. INSPECTOR, NFPORS, INFORM, FTEM, Collector, BEHAVE, Farsite, Fire Family Plus, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are all expected to be used in this position.

Applications open June 3, 2023. The opening is listed at https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/603484400

Jobs: Two permanent seasonal Fire Effects Monitor positions with the Great Lakes Fire Effects Monitoring Crew

Stationed at Indiana Dunes National Park, the Great Lakes Fire Ecology program seeks highly motivated, diversely skilled individuals for two permanent seasonal Fire Effects Monitor positions. The position are full time with benefits and status.

To learn more, please email Scott Weyenberg, Fire Ecologist, at scott_weyenberg "at" nps.gov or Mary Fisher- Dunham at mary_fisher_dunham "at" nps.gov.
Opening soon* at USAJobs.gov. Look for NS-INDU-1544-23-11908118-DH, or search Porter, Indiana. Fire Effects Monitor.

*Opens 5/8/2023

Seasonal Jobs: Fire Effects (Botany) Positions at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

The announcement will open on 2/7/2019 and close on 2/19/2019 or until 100 applicants. Interested persons should apply as soon  as possible.

https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/523385200

Registration is Open for WI Winter Fire Workshop

Join the Wisconsin Wildland Fire Community February 16 at UW Stevens Point

The Wisconsin Winter Fire Workshop returns with an agenda designed to foster connections between presenters and other participants, and networking among all members of the the Wisconsin wildland fire community.

Whether you are mainly involved in fire suppression, prescribed fire, or research (or all three) you will find content relevant to your work or education. 

Update: registration is closed. 

Participation rose by 10 percent this year, so we are near capacity. Same day registration is not guaranteed! Please contact us if you are interested in same day registration. 

Online registration closed Thursday, Feb. 8 at 8:00 PM Central. 

Cancellation and Refund Policy: Cancellations made prior to Thursday, Feb. 8 will receive a full refund. After Feb. 8, registration payments may be transferred but no refunds will be made.

If you would like to transfer your registration, please contact Michele Jasik at the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council. If you are inquiring about same day registration please contact TPOS Coordinator Craig Maier before 4 pm on Thursday, Feb. 15.

Agenda 

Registration and Welcome: 8:30-9:55 AM

Check in at the UWSP Dreyfus University Center (Laird Room 230A) runs from 8:30-9:30. Opening remarks begin at 9:30.

Plenary Presentations and Panel Discussion

Burn Timing – Research, Experience, and Application

1) Jack McGowan-Stinski, Program Manager, Lake States Fire Science Consortium – "Matching Burn Timing to Desired Fire Effects"

2) Craig Maier, Coordinator, TPOS Fire Science Consortium – "Growing Season Burn Survey Summary: 2016 Snapshot of Use in Prairie and Oak Ecosystems in the Upper Midwest"

• range of objectives and desired fire effects
• primarily being used in grassland habitats but also being employed in woodlands and wetlands
• there are lessons learned to share, but also many questions that research could address

3) Nathan Holoubek, Research Scientist, Wisconsin DNR - "Current Fuels and Fire Effects Research"

• Historical fire patterns and frequency of growing season fires
• What to expect from late growing season fuels in grasslands and prairies
• Comparison of fire behavior between late growing season and dormant season burns

4) Matt Zine, State Natural Areas program, Wisconsin DNR - "Biodiversity and Burn Timing"

Lunch and Keynote Presentation

Keynote presenter Steve Miller will share his diverse experiences with fire - as a land manager, prescribed burn boss, wildland firefighter, and NWCG course instructor

Headfires

This rapid presentation session features an array of wildland fire insights and updates from across the region, and seeks to ignite awareness and further discussion outside of the session.

Use one of the 3-minute-long slots to share an innovation or update from your part of the state.  This is your chance to share updates on research, prescribed fire, or wildfire planning/response.

Contact the organizers if you are interested in sharing a short talk (no commitment required!). 

"Seasons of Fire"

Dr. Ron Masters, Professor of Wildland Fire Management at UW-Stevens Point, will share his perspective from a career spanning more than four decades of prescribed fire practice and research. 

Closing Remarks and Networking: 3:45-5 PM

Stay for refreshments and make connections at one of two mixers:

Early Career Professional Mixer

Students and early career professionals can connect with seasoned researchers and practitioners to learn about career paths and opportunities. Each professional will be paired up with a few students as an ice-breaker, and then participants are free to mingle.This mixer is located just down the hall in the Laird breakout rooms.

Open Mixer

Connect with speakers, Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council board members, and other colleagues from around the state. For this mixer, we will remain in Laird Room 230A.

Contacts:

Questions about the agenda or same day registration? Contact TPOS coordinator Craig Maier.

Questions about payment? Contact Michele Jasik - wiprefirecouncil "at" gmail "dot" com.

2018 Wisconsin Winter Fire Workshop Leadership Team:

Adam Gundlach -  UW-Madison, Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council (WPFC) Chair

Michael Hansen -  UW-Madison, WPFC Outreach and Education

Michele Jasik -  WPFC

Dr. Yari Johnson -  UW-Platteville, WPFC

Craig Maier -  Tallgrass Prairie & Oak Savanna Fire Science Consortium (JFSP)

Eric Mark -  The Nature Conservancy, WPFC

Dr. Ron Masters -  UW Stevens Point, Professor of Wildland Fire Science

Jack McGowan-Stinski -  Lakes States Fire Science Consortium (JFSP)

Jason Stevens -  US Forest Service, Northeast Region

Michele Witecha -  Wisconsin DNR Forestry

Published 1/16/2018. Updated 2/12/2018.

Feb. 16 - Save the Date for the 2nd Wisconsin Winter Fire Workshop

Final update - registration is now open - please check out the Jan. 16 e-news post for the agenda and registration instructions:

http://www.tposfirescience.org/e-news/2018/1/16/registration-is-open-for-wi-winter-fire-workshop.html

Save the date for a day sharing multiple perspectives on wildland fire management:

• plenary session - land managers and researchers will share their experiences with seasonality of fire and fire effects, including updates on the latest prescribed fire research
• keynote speaker Steve Miller will share his diverse experiences with fire - as a land manager, prescribed burn boss, wildland firefighter, and NWCG trainer
• short talks will provide updates from around the state (share your updates on research, prescribed fire, or wildfire planning/response)
• Dr. Ron Masters will present insights from his 40 year career spanning the roles of land manager, researcher, and professor
• a 1 hour organized networking opportunity where undergraduate and graduate students can meet natural resource professionals to learn about career paths into careers with fire management responsibilities.

Learn more about UW Steven's Point alumnus Steve Miller and his work with prescribed fire in Florida's wildland urban interface and wildfire suppression on incidents across the United States.

"Burning In Their Backyard's and Having Them Say Thank You" - a recorded webinar 

10 Minutes with Steve Miller - An Interview with the Southern Fire Exchange

2018 Wisconsin Winter Fire Workshop Leadership Team:

Adam Gundlach -  UW-Madison, Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council (WPFC) Chair

Michael Hansen -  UW-Madison, WPFC Outreach and Education

Michele Jasik -  WPFC

Dr. Yari Johnson -  UW-Platteville, WPFC

Craig Maier -  Tallgrass Prairie & Oak Savanna Fire Science Consortium (JFSP)

Eric Mark -  The Nature Conservancy, WPFC

Dr. Ron Masters -  UW Stevens Point, Professor of Wildland Fire Science

Jack McGowan-Stinski -  Lakes States Fire Science Consortium (JFSP)

Jason Stevens -  US Forest Service, Northeast Region

Michele Witecha -  Wisconsin DNR Forestry

Revisions: 1/20/2018; 12/18/2017

LANDFIRE webinars (updated 11/22)

LANDFIRE, also known as the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project, delivers vegetation and fire data plus ecological models for the entire United States.

• Want to learn more?
• Are you thinking of using LANDFIRE products for your work but not sure where to start?
• Would you like some feedback on your proposed approach?  
• Have you ever wanted the undivided attention of two scientists who want to help you make the most of LANDFIRE products?  

 

If so, Northeast Region LANDFIRE coordinator, Megan Sebasky and TNC’s LANDFIRE Ecologist, Randy Swaty have got you covered. They are hosting monthly webinars where they address questions, feedback, and/or ideas submitted by current or potential LANDFIRE users, particularly from the 20 states in the USFS Northeast Region. If interested, fill out this short Google form to submit your questions, feedback, or ideas in advance of one of the scheduled webinars (of your choice, and more to be scheduled in the future).

Please make sure to submit this form at least 2 business days before upcoming webinar scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 7.

 

In addition, all are welcome to join us on any of the webinars to hear and learn from the topics discussed. Fill out the form with your name and e-mail to receive updates and invitations to the webinars.

Another way to engage with Megan, Randy, and the LANDFIRE community is through the new LANDFIRE in the Northeast Google forum.

Researchers measure global decrease in fire despite upward trend in forests

Growing populations, shrinking burn acreages: scientists measure global decrease in fire despite upward trend in forests

By Paul Zedler, TPOS Principal Investigator

Image acquired Sept. 4, 2017. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens and Jesse Allen, using Suomi NPP OMPS data provided courtesy of Colin Seftor (SSAI) and VIIRS data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.

World-wide, the area burned has decreased significantly in the period 1998-2015, according to a paper in a recent issue of Science (Andela et al. 2017). The area of vegetation burned each year has consistently decreased by 24.3 ± 8.8% from 1998-2015, as estimated using satellite data.

The trend, however, is not uniform over the globe. The researchers note that, “Globally, decreases were concentrated in regions with low and intermediate levels of tree cover [especially tropical savannas of South America and Africa and grasslands across the Asian steppe], whereas an increasing trend was observed in closed-canopy forests.” This pattern explains how their conclusion for the globe a whole does not conflict with the fact that area burned has been increasing, probably in part because of climate change, in the western U. S. and other forested regions (see, for example, Dennison et al. 2014).

The authors considered aspects of climate that might explain the decrease, most importantly variation in rainfall. They conclude that rainfall does explain much of the year-to-year variation in area burned, but not the consistent downward trend.

So what is the explanation? In two words: human activity. They point out that over the 18 years of the study the human population has increased, and we know that this is especially true for tropical regions. The drop in area burned is greatest in regions in which agricultural activity has expanded and intensified and especially in areas of low to moderate tree cover – savannas and grasslands. This is plausible given the history of fire over large areas in our upper Midwest region. The landscape level fires that once were the terror of early settlers have disappeared as agriculture expanded and human infrastructure broke up the continuity of fuels and shifted the natural vegetation that remained toward less flammable states.

The consequences of decreased fire are not all bad, at least from a human-centered perspective. The concentration of aerosols has declined and terrestrial carbon sinks have increased. But, as we know, the combination of loss of habitat by conversion to crop land, the change in the vegetation and the frequency of fire in natural habitats are likely to cause loss of biodiversity over large areas. The authors conclude with these observations: “Achieving a balance between the conservation of fire-dependent ecosystems and increasing agricultural production to support growing populations will require careful management of fire activity in human dominated landscapes.”

This conclusion is not startling to those of us concerned with fire management in our region, but now the pattern has been described at a global level. 

Works Cited 

Andela, N., D. C. Morton, L. Giglio, Y. Chen, G. R. van der Werf, P. S. Kasibhatla, R. S. DeFries, G. J. Collatz, S. Hantson, S. Kloster, D. Bachelet, M. Forrest, G. Lasslop, F. Li, S. Mangeon, J. R. Melton, C. Yue, and J. T. Randerson. 2017. A human-driven decline in global burned area. Science 356:1356-1362.

Dennison, PE, Brewer, SC, Arnold, JD and Moritz, MA. 2014. Large wildfire trends in the western United States, 1984-2011. Geophysical Research Letters 41(8): 2928-2933 

Help Further Ongoing Knowledge Exchange About Burn Timing

Do growing burns fit your desired outcomes and management objectives?

A planted prairie is burned September 15, 2016, in McHenry County, Illinois.

Whether you support, oppose, or are uncertain about using growing season burns, what questions would you like research to address to support making decisions about burn timing? 

This fall, TPOS began outreach to practitioners and researchers to improve understanding of current research and practice for growing season burns. We are working with the responses to assess information needs, improve awareness of current research, and ultimately to plan future activities that address practitioners' questions on this topic. A summary of current responses is in progress.

If you would like add your experiences to this knowledge exchange effort, please use the link below to respond to the questionnaire. This questionnaire takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

Add your information via our questionnaire 

Research briefs focused on fire ecology of oak savannas

Responses to the 2016 evaluation survey showed that research briefs for resource managers are highly-valued by land managers and other practitioners. Here are links to a handful of briefs from oak savanna research sites in Iowa and Illinois that may have slipped by many of our regular newsletter readers.

We also have several tools to help you find the research briefs most relevant for you. Our Research Briefs page includes a map, tags, and a comprehensive table. 

“Influence of Fire History on High Quality Oak Savannas”

http://www.tposfirescience.org/research-briefs-blog/2016/2/22/influence-of-fire-history-on-high-quality-oak-savannas.html

This study examined how the structure of high quality oak savanna sites may have been influenced by a history of fire, grazing, and single tree selection harvesting.

Implications for managers:

• Including punctuated longer fire free intervals in management plans can allow for recruitment in frequently burned sites  

• Combining prescribed fire with other disturbances (grazing, single tree harvest) can be used as part of land management plans in oak savannas to achieve uneven age structure on restoration sites

• Restoration plans should incorporate strategies for removing woody and herbaceous invasive species prior to implementing fire free intervals that allow for oak regeneration

“Differences Between Upland and Lowland Savannas May Indicate Need For Different Restoration Strategies”

http://www.tposfirescience.org/research-briefs-blog/2016/2/23/differences-between-upland-and-lowland-savannas-may-indicate.html

The authors of this study wondered if upland savannas are a good reference surrogate for lowland savannas or if there are key differences in how these sites respond to restoration techniques.

Implications for managers:

• Using upland savanna restoration strategies in lowland savanna sites may lead to loss of unique lowland characteristics

• Multiple historical sources (e.g., maps, surveyor descriptions, tree density) provide a more comprehensive view of past conditions

“Do Open-Grown Oaks Indicate Former Savannas?”

http://www.tposfirescience.org/research-briefs-blog/2015/11/19/do-open-grown-oaks-indicate-former-savanna.html

One method for identifying former oak savannas is identifying open grown oaks. However, some of these large, open-grown trees have established post-settlement.

The most notable result of this study may be that the open-grown oaks on this site were established post-settlement. The open-grown characteristics likely developed as the result of a savanna-like landscape being maintained through grazing and possibly periodic fire.