(INFORMAL) Office Hours with The Nature Conservancy's LANDFIRE Team
The Office Hour Series continues in 2023. Once again, the series will feature top LANDFIRE users, behind-the-scenes experts, and LANDFIRE pioneers and innovators on this once-a-month office hour. All sessions will be recorded. Subscribe to the LANDFIREvideo YouTube channel to find them.
January 25, 2023: Leveraging LANDFIRE to Understand Ecological Conditions Across National Forests and Grasslands | Sarah Anderson, Ecologist, U.S. Forest Service (View the webinar recording)
The US Forest Service models ecological conditions across National Forest System (NFS) lands using the Terrestrial Condition Assessment (TCA). The TCA synthesizes information on 30 measures of ecological condition into 12 indicators to understand overall conditions which are reported using continuous scoring from -1 (Very Poor ecological conditions) to +1 (Very Good ecological conditions). Nationally consistent datasets are critical to this effort with LANDFIRE data supporting many of the indicators.
February 22, 2023: Creating Functions for LANDFIRE in R (View the webinar recording)
March 29, 2023: Fire in the Western U.S. - Big Fires. Big Challenges. Big Need for Regional Learning and Action. | JFSP & TNC LANDFIRE (View the webinar recording)
Join the office hour and learn about the diverse inputs and outcomes from six large fires spanning five JFSP Regional Fire Science Exchanges. See the story map
April 26, 2023: A New Understanding of Historical Fire Regimes in Seasonally Dry Temperate Rainforests in the Pacific Northwest, USA | Andrew Merschel, ORISE Postdoctoral Scholar, USFS PNW Research Station, Oregon State University (View the webinar recording)
Our current understanding of the fire ecology of super productive Douglas-fir ecosystems is not well informed by precise records of historical wildfires and how these wildfires influenced forest dynamics over time. This presentation will summarize dozens of newly developed tree ring records of fire and forest development history collected across the Western Cascades and in the central Oregon Coast Range. These new records provide a wealth of precise information on the frequency, size, and effects of historical wildfires. We will discuss the key takeaways and surprises in these records and how they can provide a better understanding of fire ecology in the Pacific Northwest.
May 31, 2023: Searching for goldilocks: Exploring Remote Sensing Data Products in the Context of Beaver, Wildfire Severity & LANDFIRE | Robyn Holmes, Anabranch Solutions, Conservation Data Lab, Randy Swaty, TNC Ecologist (View the webinar recording)
Robyn Holmes adapted the methods from the 2019 paper Smokey the Beaver: Beaver‐Dammed Riparian Corridors Stay Green During Wildfire Throughout the Western USA by using three freely available remotely sensed datasets (NAIP, Sentinel-2 MSI, and Landsat 8) to investigate the extent that spatial resolution impacts the ability to detect change pre- and post- fire in a beaver inhabited area of SE Wyoming, USA that burned in 2018 (Badger Creek Fire). TNC LANDFIRE Ecologist, Randy Swaty will discuss changes in LANDFIRE cover and disturbance data that occurred before, during and after the same 2018 fire.
June 28, 2023: Using Fire Compartments and Historical Land Cover to Rediscover Grasslands in the Eastern U.S. for Restoration and Management | Brice B. Hanberry, Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Rapid City, South Dakota, USA & Reed F. Noss, Florida Institute for Conservation Science and Southeastern Grasslands Initiative, Melrose, Florida (View the webinar recording)
With a changing climate, grasslands are expected to be more resilient to fires, droughts, and insect outbreaks. As a result, grassland restoration and management are of particular interest to ecologists, but little is known about the historical extent of grasslands in the eastern U.S. Brice Hanberry and Reed Noss will discuss how they used the concept of "fire compartments" and historical land cover (sourced from LANDFIRE products) to model and understand potential grassland cover in the eastern U.S. Join us for this casual back-and-forth discussion.
July & August, 2023: NO OFFICE HOURS
September 27, 2023: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: How the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) is Changing the Look of Fuels Planning | Kim Ernstrom, Fire Application Specialist - Wildland Fire Management RD&A - National Park Service; Wendy Detwiler, Bre Schueller, Fire Application Specialist(s) - Wildland Fire Management RD&A - USDA Forest Service
The Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) has been in action with the support of LANDFIRE data since 2017. We have a user base of just over 4,000 accounts and continue to hear how IFTDSS is being used in the field in a variety of innovative ways. Projects that have leveraged IFTDSS include; Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), Prescribed Fire Plans, Risk Assessments, NEPA Analyses and many more. We will take the hour to showcase a few of the success stories where IFTDSS has helped streamline the fuels planning work of fire managers and in many cases demonstrated how simple, map-based analysis and graphics provide powerful images to support this very important work.
October 25, 2023: Wildfire Exposure Assessment for Three Boreal Communities in Alaska | Robert Ziel, Free Agent Fire Analyst (FBAN/LTAN/SOPL) & Jennifer Schmidt, Associate Professor of Resource Management and Policy, University of Alaska Anchorage
In effort to account for and accommodate climate change and the increase in disturbance frequency, we have used a 31-year history of land cover change to calibrate hazard and exposure assessments in 3 important communities in the far north, Anchorage and Fairbanks in Alaska as well as Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. We plan to discuss data used, methods applied, and important results. LANDFIRE products were used provide guidance for fuel characteristics and to evaluate land cover characteristics in urban areas.
December 6, 2023: TBA