Events and News

The USDA Forest Service, Southern Region will soon be advertising for an Air Quality Specialist (GS-0401/1301-12). The incumbent will be responsible for providing a variety of tasks associated with managing air resources for the National Forests in the Southern Region. The position may be stationed in Ashville, NC or Atlanta, Ga, and will report to the Director of Biological and Physical Resources in the Atlanta, GA Regional Office.

The International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) would like to invite you to participate, either as a mentor or mentee, in its Mentoring Program.

The IAWF has an open period for applications two times per year. After the applications are received and reviewed, the IAWF will match the mentors and mentees based on interests and geographic location. IAWF encourages both face to face mentoring and online remote mentoring, depending on the location of the participants. Both parties will need to mutually commit to six months.  The IAWF will provide participants with resources, i.e. checklists, agreements, suggestions, etc.

What makes a good mentor?

• Commitment to the mentee's learning and project goals.
• Ability to provide positive feedback, encouragement, and advice when requested.
• Interest in seeing and supporting the mentee’s growth and success in their professional or personal goals.
• Ability to ask key questions to support the mentee to develop their problem-solving and creative thinking skills, and to be resilient and independent.
• Ability to establish clear expectations and commitments, to express these to the mentee, and to ask for the same.
• Generosity with tools and approaches that support others to learn
• Willingness to share key contacts and networks with the mentee, and to source other areas of expertise when required.

**The IAWF has a SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY for one mentee to work with Dr. Stephen Pyne on a writing project. It's about nonfiction writing on fire for a more general public than scientific papers can reach. It will be a sampler of literary techniques that writers can explore and decide which they are comfortable with.**

The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is seeking one Wildland Fire Analyst Intern to work directly with our wildfire planning analysts and scientists on various projects related to fire suppression, fire danger, smoke management, and fire weather. The DNR Wildfire Program is the state's largest on-call fire department with over 1,500 permanent and seasonal employees engaged in fire suppression across 13 million acres of private and state forest lands annually. Within the Wildfire Program, planning section staff provide scientific consultation, analysis, monitoring, and predictive capabilities to support the agency's fire operations mission.
 
This unique internship will offer the selected candidate valuable, direct experience and the opportunity to work on current and planned projects or choose their own projects within the planning section's program areas:

• [Fire Meteorology/Climate] Synthesize climate change impacts to agency fire suppression capabilities, investigate meteorological conditions leading to public smoke complaints or smoke intrusions
• [Fire Danger] Analyze fire occurrence trends across state lands, determine appropriate fire danger indices for Industrial Fire Precaution Level zones
• [Science/Tech Transfer] Conduct literature syntheses of wildland fire science and technology subjects and prepare non-technical reports for state fire leadership, develop a training program/material for implementing mobile data collection efforts for initial attack firefighting
• [GIS] Aggregate and analyze state and federal fire geospatial data for integration into corporate data systems, perform ad-hoc analysis for fire management, use scripting tools to automate data delivery and map production, enhance existing web GIS viewers and create meaningful data dashboards
• [Fire Environment Monitoring] Determine candidate sites for future fire detection camera installations, evaluate effectiveness of current fire weather station locations for fire danger applications

This intern will visit, under staff supervision, active wildfire incidents (fireline, incident bases, helibases) to learn more about fire operations and may also participate in daily statewide fire operations calls. At the end of the internship period, the successful candidate is expected to present a presentation to division staff on their experience as well as a report on their project.

This is a two-year position with the possibility of extension contingent upon funding and performance. The individual in this position will report to the CIRA Sr Project Manager and work in collaboration with other mathematic model developers in GSL, as well as the broader community, testing and refining mathematical algorithms for assimilation of observations and data impact assessments. The Assimilation Branch conducts innovative research on use of conventional and novel observations for initialization of atmospheric and coupled earth systems models.

This position will develop mathematical techniques and computer software systems to improve use of satellite-based fire detection and aerosol optical depth products, indicating the onset of wildfires, their emissions and local conditions in areas surrounding wildfires. Aerosols and particulates produced by a wildfire also exert feedback effects on the surrounding weather, and this position will improve modeling of this influence. To improve the accuracy of a high-resolution convection allowing model (CAM), they will implement an assimilation procedure to improve initial distributions of aerosol tracers that influence wildfire-weather feedback. They will assimilate satellite-based aerosol optical depth (AOD) to improve modeling of interactions of aerosol tracers with radiation and microphysics, which should yield improved forecasts of temperature, winds, and moisture. NOAA’s Finite Volume-3 (FV3)-based Unified Forecast System (UFS) is the modeling system that will be used, along with the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation (GSI) analysis package, transitioning to the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI) software. They will work within a data assimilation team, with additional work on complementary projects.

Canada Wildfire (The Canadian Partnership of Wildland Fire Science) is a network that addresses priority research needs in partnership with academia, government, industry and not-for-profit decision-makers. The vision of this unique network is to provide international leadership in wildland fire science, shaping wildfire management in Canada and around the world.

Positioned at the University of Alberta, the Managing Director provides leadership for the day-to-day operations of Canada Wildfire, financial oversight, and contributes to the development and maintenance of crucial partnerships.

Apply by March 25

This position will serve as a technical smoke management specialist providing assistance and advice for the National Forests of the USFS Rocky Mountain Region and as the national coordinator for the USFS cache of smoke monitoring equipment.

Apply at USA Jobs

Based on current budget proposals, the JFSP will be have a 50% reduction in budget from FY2019. The sign-on letter will be delivered to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Subcommittees for Appropriations for Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies expressing collective support for the program. Signatures are needed by FRIDAY 03/06/2020. Please consider whether you feel this merits your signature and/or broader distribution to others within your networks.

This sign-on letter is designed primarily for individual signatures. Federal employees are asked not to use their official position or time to sign on to this letter; doing so could be considered a violation of the Hatch Act. If someone lists their federal position or email, they must be deleted from the list. HOWEVER, federal employees who want to sign on as private citizens are welcome to if they list a personal email and use personal time to sign on. They are of course free to consult with their agency for guidance on this matter.

Use the link below to review and sign the letter.

Wayne Harrison was a leader and innovator, working for decades in fire ecology and prescribed fire. As a lasting contribution to the fire ecology and management community, Wayne's family partnered with the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE) after his passing in June 2019 to create the Wayne Harrison Memorial Scholarship to support the academic and professional growth of students through funding research, management, or education projects related to wildland fire science.

Scholarships up to $2,500 will be awarded annually, with applications due March 31 and awarded by May 31.

The Australian Citizen Science Association is conducting a Citizen Science Bushfire Response Project Audit to gather information on research projects that include bushfire/forest/wildfire as their focus and citizen science as part of their methodologies.

Job Knowledge (to perform the essential activities of this position, the employees must know or understand the following): Fire ecology; fire effects and by-products and their ecosystem actions; fire weather; fuel types; fuel conditions; fuel assessment; smoke management; NWCG standards; knowledge of tools and techniques used to prepare for and implement Rx burns.

Prescribed Fire Pre and Post Operations:

• Function within a team environment to accomplish overall ecological fire management activities including: planning; fuels inventory and area layout; preparation of tools and equipment; preparation of burn units, such as establishing fuel breaks/line construction.
• implementation of firing techniques using firing devices; patrolling and mop up assignments.
• Maintain ecological function of natural systems for the benefit of fisheries and wildlife habitat. Provide for employee and public safety while implementing assigned work projects.

Equipment Operation and Maintenance :

• Ability to operate various types of equipment such as 4-wheel drive vehicles, all-terrain vehicles (ATV & UTV), chainsaws and hand tools in a safe and efficient manner.
• Ability to provide equipment maintenance and repair to a fire ready condition, including hand tools, chainsaws, water delivery pumps and vehicles.
• Ability to organize and track inventories of fire line equipment for accountability of equipment and costs

Other Duties:

• Participate in forest thinning operations to reduce and maintain stand densities.
• Ability to conduct miscellaneous wildlife area duties as assigned during non-fire periods such as visitor signage replacement, repair construction, assistance with planting of food plots, etc
• Gathers or assists in gathering detailed resource information to provide basic pre- and post-burn monitoring such as fuels inventories and vegetation surveys.