The Southwest Fire Science Consortium (SWFSC) is hosting researcher Dr. Kelly Jones for a webinar presentation titled
“Denver Water and US Forest Service spent over $60 million to protect Denver’s water supply. Did it work?”

Who: Dr. Kelly Jones, Associate Professor of Ecological Economics with Colorado State University, Human Dimensions of Natural Resources

When: Wednesday, June 22, 2022 at 11am AZ / 12pm MDT

Where: virtual webinar via Zoom

A smoke plume from the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in northern Colorado. Photo by Kelly Jones.

What: Collaboratively-funded fuel treatments are becoming more common in the western U.S. to proactively address wildfire impacts. Water utilities often play an important role in these collaborations and are motivated by the significant impact that wildfire has on source water protection. In this webinar, Dr. Jones will present research which provides insight on how the economic returns from proactive wildfire mitigation could be improved. She and her team produced an economic assessment of Denver’s Forests to Faucets partnership, a collaboration which invested >$60 million in wildfire mitigation projects between 2011 and 2019. The research, combining wildfire modeling, sediment modeling, and primary and secondary data on economic values, quantified the impact of the actual investments on multiple values at risk. Large benefits to source water protection and other values at risk resulted from these proactive investments but the benefits only exceed the costs of funding wildfire mitigation under certain conditions.

This webinar is intended for an audience of practitioners, land managers, researchers, and others with a vested interest in fire science, natural resource management, water protections, and the wildland-urban interface.