Fuels Portal

Positions are being filled under the Pathways Student Internship Authority which is designed to provide students enrolled in a variety of educational institutions, from high school to graduate level, with paid work opportunities in agencies to explore federal careers while in school.

Responsibilities:

• The incumbent of this position performs a variety of clearly defined tasks within one or more functional areas of biological sciences.
• Biological sciences include forestry, rangeland management, wildlife biology, fish biology, ecology, botany, recreation, natural resources management, biological sciences, and other related disciplines.
• Assignments will vary by Agency and setting.
• The major duties include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Develops and applies knowledge of principles, concepts, work processes, and regulations of one or more functional areas of biological science.
• Assists in one or more phases of the research process.
• Performs routine techniques using a variety of specialized equipment.
• Records instrument readings, collects samples, and takes measurements.
• Maintains inventory of chemical and biological materials.
• Maintains work area in a neat and orderly manner
• Forest Service incumbents in wildland fire management may also perform the following:
• Develops and applies knowledge of fuels management and fire suppression techniques.
• Cleans, reconditions, and stores fire tools and equipment.
• Serves as a member of fire crew assigned to suppress wildland fires.
• Reviews detailed procedural instructions and receives in-depth on-the-job and formal classroom training.

POSITION PURPOSE: To expose candidates to a wide variety of functions within the Company, to include botany, wildlife, fisheries, timber cruising, forest engineering, sales, timberland services, forestry, and operations.Designed to provide an opportunity to gain an understanding of the processes and roles within Green Diamond at multiple locations within the company.

DUTIES:  Plans, coordinates, and facilitates wildland fire prevention and pre-suppressions actions to reduce hazard and fire fuels in and around the project area. Drives to field sites to implement fire pre-suppression actions through vegetation control through manual and chemical means in challenging terrain. Ensures successful completion of projects and participant safety. Works with NNRM Staff, partners, collaborators, and permit holders to coordinate volunteer service projects, restoration activities, and outplanting and weed removal efforts.  Designs and creates displays, presentations, websites, social media, various documents (e.g., flyers, handouts, brochures) and related materials for use in fire prevention outreach and education events. Attends and helps plan community and outreach events to educate the community on wildland fire prevention and pre-suppression.  Work includes but not limited to, volunteer event coordination and participation, outreach material development, and coordination of meetings with the local community.  Processes, organizes, files all paperwork, spreadsheets and reports following completion of outreach programs and volunteer days, and maintains records. Provides monthly reports on number of education visits, hours worked on service projects, accomplishments, challenges faced, and ideas for improving the fire prevention program. Oversees up to six (6) summer and seasonal interns and up to thirty (30) volunteers.  Assists with weed monitoring and control, out planting, fence construction, repair and maintenance, seed collection and propagation, wildlife and plant surveys and related activities.  Must be able/willing to work on nights and weekends and occasionally camp. This position is not involved in direct action on fire suppression operations and will not be exposed to the hazards and risks of fireline personnel.

The Great Basin Institute (GBI), in cooperation with the US Forest Service (USFS), is recruiting a Forester to work cooperatively with USFS and GBI staff to determine, plan and arrange the resources necessary to complete the Eshom Ecological Restoration Project, Phase 1. The project seeks to improve forest health and wildlife habitat by reducing fuels from drought- and beetle-impacted trees on the Hume Lake Ranger District. Approximately 1,000 acres of forest will be treated over the next two years.

The project is funded by the California legislature through Greenhouse Gas Reduction Funds.  The program seeks to minimize the loss of forest carbon from large, intense wildfires while promoting carbon sequestration efforts through biomass utilization. The Mule Deer Foundation and the National Wild Turkey Federation will partner to convert tree material to mulch for use in the agricultural industry.  As part of a larger silvicultural study, the forester will also assist with data collection that will provide the US Forest Service with baseline information to assess ecological restoration measures and changes in forest health over time.

Timeline:

• Anticipated start date: Fall 2019
• 12-month appointment with additional 12 months available pending performance

Compensation:

• Salary: $65,000-$75,000 DOE
• Housing provided at Hume Ranger District at $8.70 daily (for no less than one month at a time), depending on availability
• Fully paid health insurance premiums (medical, dental, vision, prescription); dependent coverage available out-of-pocket
• Paid holidays and personal leave
• Professional training and certifications may be provided as needed

The Boise National Forest will advertiseto fill two (2) GS-0460-7/9 Forester's to serve as projectleaders supervising field crews of permanent seasonal employees for the Boise-Payette Timber Strike Team.

This is a unique group within the Forest Service that provides employees with valuable operational forestry skills. Team members have an opportunity to see how vegetation management is applied across different Forest programs, network with other forestry professionals, and explore landscapes throughout the Intermountain Region.

The U.S. Geological Survey Southwest Biological Science Center in Flagstaff, AZ is hiring a fire ecology post-doc to begin December 2019. The position is full-time for 13 months. Salary is $60,000 per year with benefits. The post-doc will apply fuels mapping methods and fire modeling to understand current and future fire behavior in grasslands, savannas, and dry forests of the southwestern U.S. The post-doc will work with federal agencies to develop strategies to reduce wildfire risk and support related management needs.

The University of Montana Wilderness Institute seeks to fill a PhD assistantship to work on a funded project entitled, “Ecosystem Response to Fire in the Wilderness.” This project will measure vegetation and fuels data across sites that burned in the last 40 years in order to assess the potential for fire-caused changes to forest structure and function, including the possibility of conversions to non-forest. This project is a collaboration with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI). The position will be supervised by Dr. Andrew Larson.

The PhD student will: conduct field and remote-sensing based investigations of fire effects in wilderness areas, including publication of results in peer-reviewed journals; work collaboratively with UM faculty, staff, and students, ALWRI researchers, and wilderness managers; and support undergraduate education at UM through occasional service as a teaching assistant, field trip leader, or field course assistant. Six semesters of support are available, with annual renewal based on satisfactory performance.

Two PhD degree options are available: Forest and Conservation Sciences or Systems Ecology.

The forestry program is responsible for the ecological enhancement, economic development and sustainable use of forest resources of allotted, Tribal trust and Tribal fee patent lands for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The Forester assists with development and implementation of activities and functions to carry out provisions of CTUIR missions and 25 CFR. The Forester develops, implements, and continues programs designed to secure optimum conservation and utilization of soil, water, and forestry resources to provide a reasonable income to Indian landowners consistent with other resource and cultural values. The CTUIR employs the best available science to forward our mission through participation in policy, administrative process, public outreach and education. The position will be under the supervision of the Supervisory Forester. The Forestry Program is required to:

1. Integrate the protection, conservation, utilization, and enhancement of Tribal fee, trust and/or restricted Indian forestry lands with the desires of the beneficial owners;
2. Ensure that beneficial owners receive fair market value for forestry production; and
3. Accomplish 1 and 2 in conjunction with natural resource management objectives and cultural values of the Tribes.

We encourage you to  gather your information to nominate some very deserving folks for these prestigious awards! The recipient does not need to be an IAWF member to receive an award. Awards will be announce and/or presented at one of our upcoming IAWF Conferences in 2020.

If you’ve nominated someone in the past and they were not selected as the recipient, please do not hesitate to re-nominate them. At times we have numerous deserving folks, however, at this time we are only able to select one person per award.

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) are open through 5 pm MST, December 5, 2019.

The Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) announcement FA-FOA0020-001 has one task statement. Proposals must address one or more of the following topic areas:

• Fuels management and fire behavior
• Changing fire environment
• Emissions and air quality
• Fire effects and post-fire recovery
• Relative impacts of prescribed fire versus wildfire
• Human dimensions of fire

The primary announcement FA-FOA0020-002 has one task statement:

1. Performance of fuel breaks and fuel break systems  

The Regional Fire Science Exchange announcement FA-FOA0020-003 has one task statement focused on leading and executing a regional fire science exchange in the following four regions (see map and supporting information in the FOA):

1. Alaska
2. California
3. Great Basin
4. Pacific Islands

Text of the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) statement:

Climate change has already had significant consequences in the global wildfire reality, affecting citizens as well as the global wildland fire community. Many key issues of importance to the IAWF - including firefighter and civilian safety, fire management expenses, changing weather patterns, natural role of fire, fire regimes and ecosystem succession, as well as the wildland urban interface - all require recognition of the role of climate change.

Globally, we regularly see new reports about the “worst”, “largest”, “most expensive”, and “deadliest” fires and fire seasons. In 2019 and 2018, striking headlines read “Arctic on Fire” (Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska), and the most expensive and largest fire years were recorded in 2018 in California and British Columbia, respectively, breaking the previous records set in 2017. The Camp Fire (CA, 2018), Attica Greece (2018), Black Saturday Australia (2009), and Portugal (2017) fires were all ranked amongst the top 11 deadliest fires in the last 100 years.

Under current climate change scenarios, fire regimes will change in terms of increases in burned area, severity, fire season length, frequency, and ignitions from lightning. Many parts of the world have already experienced an increase in record breaking temperatures and recurring droughts that have led to shifts in wildland fire. There is already evidence of climate-driven fire regime change in the Northern Hemisphere upper latitudes with fire risk increasing in non-traditional fire-prone countries. The consequences of human actions are here today, not in some distant future, and these are alarming and, most important, escalating.

The IAWF encourages all countries to emphasize increased international fire training and to implement easier cross-border sharing of professional fire management resources for suppression and prescribed fire opportunities. These will lessen the irrationally heavy burden any single country will have to carry to manage extreme fire seasons. Homes and communities must be better planned and built, so they are increasingly fire resistant and more adapted to natural disasters of all types. Health impacts of fires have long-term consequences, not only those that are immediate from the flames but also those from smoke and toxins, and these must be considered when planning and managing for future wildland fires. Wildfires and smoke do not recognize borders. As the global community tries to manage the new wildfire challenges, it is incumbent on everyone to prepare to support international neighbours in protecting lives and communities from fires and their impacts.

IAWF Vice-President Toddi Steelman recently said in Wildfire magazine (August 2019) that “Recent extreme weather events have catalysed public belief in, and concern about, climate change, and boosted public support for government actions to reduce its harmful impacts. This gives us a window of opportunity when conditions are right to make great strides on climate if we are strategic about it.” This window of opportunity requires people having the knowledge and political will to act now. Our global scientific community needs to publicly share knowledge learned about patterns of extreme wildland fire and weather, as well as how climate change is associated with these patterns. Our global fire management community needs to leverage its credibility to share its experiences about how climate change and its role in extreme weather is playing out in their day to day work environments. Connecting extreme weather events to real on-the-ground consequences can help more people understand how climate impacts are affecting us all.

The Lake States Fire Science Consortium (LSFSC) is committed to ensuring that the ‘best available science’ is available for planning and managing northern fire-dependent ecosystems of the Lake States. Where there are current gaps in the science, the goal of the LSFSC is to assist in filling those gaps so that science informs practice and vice-versa. Unfortunately, for many local fire management issues, there are few resources available to bring managers and scientists together to solve these important issues.

In an effort to enhance the opportunities for managers and scientists to work together, and to expose future professionals to opportunities of management and research collaborations, the LSFSC requests proposals to fund research internships that address relevant fire science and management issues associated with northern fire-dependent ecosystems of the Lake States region (See our Ecosystems page for a description of fire-dependent ecosystems that are the focus of the Lake States Fire Science Consortium). Proposals must be developed by joint manager-scientist teams (i.e. both must be listed as co-PIs and equally contribute to proposal development) and outline how the research internship will address a critical need that will help improve management of fire-dependent ecosystems locally. Preference will be given to partnerships that have not yet received funding from the program.

The LSFSC anticipates awarding several $4,000 research internship awards. It is expected that 100% of the funds should go to support the undergraduate internship experience (preferably for salary, though a limited amount of funds may be used to purchase materials and supplies needed to complete the project - funds should not be used as a supplement or summer salary for graduate students). All proposals must be submitted by 5:00 PM Eastern / 4:00 PM Central on Monday, December 9, 2019 by email to Jack McGowan-Stinski. There will be no exceptions to this closing date and time.