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Prescribed fires and mechanical thinning efforts are increasingly common land management tools intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But research into their long term effectiveness is somewhat limited. A recent study looked at the effects of such interventions over more than 20 years on a dry, low-elevation research forest in Montana, and found that the combination of thinning and burning was the most likely to reduce fire risk.
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The Forest Service’s recently released “Strategy to Expand Prescribed Fire Training in the West” document is blunt: “The prescribed fire implementation environment continues to grow in complexity, IT READS, whereas the ability of practitioners to practice and hone their expertise has lagged, particularly in the Western United States.” The newly established Western Prescribed Fire Training Center is a major effort to address that workforce issue.
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New research shows that “beaver-modified riverscapes” are very resilient to the effects of large wildfires. After burns, the refuge they provide to flora and fauna can also aid in post-fire recovery. That’s why the researchers involved argue that beavers “can be part of a comprehensive fire-mitigation strategy.”
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Many people are aware that snowpacks - especially in the late spring - can be a key indicator for the sort of wildfire season that could be coming. Less well known is that wildfires themselves can impact snowpacks, as new research is showing. Past burns can speed melting by as much as 57 percent, and lead to snow packs disappearing up to three weeks faster.
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2023 was a strange fire season. It was both the slowest in the U.S. in a quarter century, but also saw one of the deadliest blazes in the country’s history in Hawaii. Unprecedented wildfires in Canada also blanketed much of America in smoke for weeks.
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A new study shows GoFundMe donations to disaster survivors often benefit people with high incomes, not those who need it most.
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In recent years, there have been a number of wildfires that resulted in the loss of numerous structures, and in some cases many lives. A new paper argues that thinking about these incidents as “wildfires that involved houses” has a lot of counterproductive policy implications.
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Ahead of the next wildfire season, Boulder County is expanding its weather monitoring system. It previously had just one weather station, in the Sugarloaf area, to monitor fire conditions across almost 500 square miles. Reporter Tim Drugan with Boulder Reporting Lab joined us to talk about what’s in the works.
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For a third time, Congress has extended temporary pay increases for federal wildland firefighters with a continuing resolution. This time, these increases extend through early March.
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Laura Daniel-Davis, the acting deputy secretary of the Interior Department, made the announcement at NIFC in Boise.