Wildfire Wednesdays #135: Fire Weather Alerts, Smoke Management, and Preparing for the Fire Season

Ahead of the 2024 Southwest fire season, this Wildfire Wednesday revisits information from Wildfire Wednesday #111 on red flag warnings, as well as information on smoke management, the 2024 fire season outlook, home hazard assessments, and a deep dive into homeowners insurance across the country.

Happy Wednesday, FAC NM readers!

Picture this: you wake up to the early morning light streaming in your window and turn your head to greet the day. You notice tree limbs dancing in the infamous New Mexico spring winds, see that the leaves on the bushes are looking pretty piqued, and remember that it has been a while since it’s rained. Pulling out your smartphone, you open the weather app to check the forecast. There, at the top of the application, is an alert which reads “Red Flag Warning” from the National Weather Service. What does that mean?
This week’s Wildfire Wednesday will break down alerts and watch-outs that come with the summer weather, including what they mean for fire risk and how to prepare for Red Flag days.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Rachel

Red Flag Warnings

The basics: what is a Red Flag Warning?

The origin of the name, Red Flag Warning, is a literal one, according to Tamara Wall of the Desert Research Institute: “If there was… high fire danger, local fire stations would go and run a red flag up the flagpole. It was a very visual, kind of pre-mass communications way to signal to people in the area that it was a high-danger day” (NPR, 4/14/23).

From the Ready! Set! Go! 4-page guide on the basics of Red Flag Warnings, how to respond, Red Flag safety tips, and more.

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), which issues these alerts in conjunction with local and state agencies, a Red Flag Warning is part of a weather forecast which indicates a local increase in fire danger risk in the next 12 to 24 hours. This increased risk is due to a combination of critical fuel conditions and critical weather conditions (warm temperatures, very low humidities, and strong winds). This means that if a wildfire starts, the conditions are right for it to spread rapidly and be difficult to contain. Red Flag Warnings differ in timing from a fire weather watch, which is a longer-term forecast that warns of the possible development of Red Flag conditions in the next 72 hours.

Indicators of fire weather

Resource and image adapted from the Northwest Fire Science Consortium.

This combination of 1. low relative humidity (RH), 2. strong surface wind, 3. unstable air (an incoming or outgoing storm system that creates a significant temperature differential between the land surface and lower atmosphere), and 4. drought creates critical fire weather (NWCG, Critical Fire Weather). When you see a Red Flag Warning, it means that critical fire weather is currently or will soon be occurring. The alert, whether online, on the news, or on your weather app, will usually indicate for how long the Red Flag Warning is forecast to last. Fire management personnel take Red Flag Warnings into account and may respond by changing staffing numbers or preemptively moving resources into a certain region to be prepared for a potential ignition. During extended periods of high risk, local authorities may consider policy decisions like banning campfires or closing specific areas (see ‘How to Respond’, below).

In the Southwest, drought becomes an important precursor to critical fire weather by drying out live vegetation as well as logs, sticks, needles, and grass on the ground, therefore increasing fuel availability. Critical fire weather elements, combined to create an unusually dry airmass for the region and season, produce extreme fire behavior when a fire does start. As we transition from El Niño to La Niña regional oscillations and hit the beginning of the summer weather, it is worth noting that light monsoons can produce gusty wind, low RH, and lightning without much precipitation. Learn more about the 2024 fire season drought and precipitation outlook here.

All Red Flag days are not equal and the response to Red Flag Warnings may be different in different areas and on different days depending on Planning Level or local decision makers (Weather.Gov Red Flag Index). Differences in Red Flag days depend on:

  • The magnitude of specific weather elements,

  • Antecedent fuel conditions (have things been dry for a long time leading up to the Red Flag day?),

  • Drought periods - it may not take “as much weather” to produce control problems (if fuels predisposed by being quite dry)

The geographic scope of Red Flag Warnings

There are several contributing factors when it comes to issuing a Red Flag Warning, but primary criteria include relative humidity of 15% or less combined with sustained surface winds, or frequent gusts, of 25 mph or greater. Both conditions must occur simultaneously for at least 3 hours out of a 12-hour period, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists also consider how all forecasted weather elements combine to create hazardous conditions (e.g. moderate humidity combined with high temperatures and high winds), even if they don’t fit the humidity and wind criteria individually.

For local Red Flag Warning alerts, meteorologists look at forecasted temperature, incoming and outgoing storm systems (high- and low-pressure systems) with their potential for wind, the likelihood of wet or dry lightning, the dryness of fuels based on recent precipitation and season, and how local terrain will interact with wind and potential ignitions (YouTube: Forecasting Fire Weather in the US). Local forecasts also inform the national NWS Fire Weather Outlook forecast by contributing to fire weather composite maps and short-wave ensemble forecasts.

Fire weather forecasts are specific to a certain geographic area based on storm systems, temperature, terrain, and winds. Accordingly, Red Flag Warnings are site-specific, which means that one part of the state (e.g. the eastern plains near Las Vegas) may be under a Red Flag Warning while another part (e.g. Santa Fe on the other side of the mountains) is not.

While Fire Weather Watches may be issued with meteorologists forecasting up to 8 days in advance, Red Flag Warnings are only issued when the critical fire weather conditions meeting the criteria for these Warnings are expected to begin in the next 12-24 hours.

Click to visit the Red Flag map from the National Weather Service

The National Weather Service provides information on the scope of Red Flag Warnings. This information may be found in the alert itself (a text box showing what cities or areas are covered by the alert), or can be found by visiting the NWS weather hazards map.

How to respond to a Red Flag Warning

Spread the word!

Educate your friends, family, and neighbors on what Red Flag Warnings are, what they mean, and how to respond when they see the warning pop up.

Research the scope of the Warning and restrictions for your area

Begin your fire restrictions research by clicking on the image to visit the Southwest Area Fire Restriction map, hosted by the National Interagency Fire Center and the SW Coordinating Group.

Visit the NWS interactive weather hazard map to determine the area covered by a particular Red Flag Warning. Once you know if your current (or planned) location is under a fire weather watch or Red Flag Warning, visit the local city or county webpage to find out if that area is also under current fire restrictions or burn bans. Both local municipalities and State and National Parks and National Forests may enter into fire restrictions for long periods of time. These restrictions indicate a prolonged (seasonal) period of dangerous fire weather. During the warm months, it is always a good idea to visit the webpage of your destination park or forest prior to leaving so that you are aware of any restrictions in place.

Adjust your behavior accordingly

  • DO NOT burn debris piles.

  • If you are allowed to burn in burn barrels in your area, cover them with a weighted metal cover.

  • DO NOT throw cigarettes or matches on the ground or out of a moving vehicle.

  • If outdoor fires are allowed, make sure to extinguish them properly. Drown fires and charcoal with plenty of water and stir with a shovel to make sure everything is cold to the touch with bare skin.

    • Never leave a fire or barbeque unattended. Sparks or embers can blow into leaves or grass, ignite a fire, and quickly spread.

  • Avoid parking a recently driven vehicle on dry grass or other areas with vegetative cover.

  • Ensure that no chains or hanging metal are dragging from your vehicle or tow-behind trailer which could cause a spark.

Prepare your home

  • Before leaving home for the day, make sure that all house and car windows are closed and bring flammable materials like outdoor cushions inside the home or garage.

  • Create defensible space (including removing dead vegetation from around the house and clearing debris from gutters, around doors, and under porches).

Photo credit: Sonoma County Emergency Management Department.


Plan for possible ignitions or evacuations

  • Prepare your go-bag

  • Keep your phone charged

  • Make sure you know where your loved ones — especially people with disabilities or mobility issues — are during the day

  • Make a plan for what to do with any pets or livestock in case of an evacuation.

Smoke Management

Air Quality

In February 2024, the U.S. EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution (PM2.5). They have released several fact sheets about this rule change, including “Updates to the Air Quality Index…”, “Strengthening the National Air Quality Health Standard…”, “Wildland Fire, Air Quality, and Public Health Considerations”, and more.

HEPA Filter Loan Programs

Portable HEPA air filters provide clean and healthy breathable air to individuals and households by filtering out very small and harmful particles, such as those carried in wildfire smoke, allergens, and industrial smog. An episode of All Things Considered details the importance of making sure the air inside is clean and safe to breathe.

FACNM offers a HEPA filter loan program, with several participating areas across north and central New Mexico. These are prioritized for loan to smoke-sensitive individuals during periods of smoke impacts and are shared in coordination with network partners. An article from NPR highlighted the importance of a HEPA filter loan program in building public trust and how far individual actions can go, saying “today [Angie Krall, El Rito District Ranger, will] stop by a community library and lend an air filter to someone with asthma.”

For those who are unable to acquire a HEPA home air filtration system, ABC News and the NYT Wirecutter have guidelines for making your own DIY filters and FACNM offers guidelines on how to filter your air.

Smoke 101: Science Synthesis

In November 2023, the USDA Rocky Mountain Research Station hosted a land-management focused panel discussion with smoke experts to discuss the State of the Science about smoke. Topics included the differences in smoke from wildfires and prescribed fires, capability to accurately predict smoke, ecological impacts of smoke, climate modeling for future smoke load prediction, smoke exposure and health outcomes, and more. RMRS has since compiled the lessons learned from that panel discussion into a Science You Can Use: Smoke 101 synthesis!

State of the Air: 2024 Report from the American Lung Association

The Clean Air Act requires the U .S . Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set health-based limits, called National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), for six dangerous outdoor air pollutants: particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead . “State of the Air” looks at two of the most widespread and dangerous pollutants from this group, fine particulate matter and ozone.
This year’s report finds that “wildfires in the western US and Canada remain the major contributing factor to increasing number of days and places with unhealthy levels of particle pollution… Wildfires are also continuing to increase the severity of pollution, resulting in the highest ever number of days designated as [‘very unhealthy’ or ‘hazardous’ air quality].”

Additional Resources

Upcoming Webinar

Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs) are an important fire risk and readiness tool. Join knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado as they discuss digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are a key fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them.

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium has just released a home risk analysis fact sheet containing steps homeowners can take to reduce fire risk. Step #1 is - you may have guessed it - conducting an HHA! View the fact sheet here.

2024 Fire Season Weather Outlook

In this 30-minute overview, meteorologist Kerry Jones with the USDA Forest Service provides a summer 2024 fire season forecast. Watch the recording to learn about what the spring transition from El Niño to La Niña may mean for summer heat, fire likelihood and severity, monsoonal patterns, beneficial fire, and reforestation efforts.

New York Times: Climate Forward Newsletter

4 Takeaways from an Investigation into Homeowners Insurance
Journalists from the New York Times conducted a deep dive into the home insurance industry to investigate how it is being impacted by climate change and what the ramifications might be. Their key takeaways were:

  1. Climate change is upending the insurance market
    "Previously small-scale threats such as wildfires, hail, and windstorms have become more intense and frequent. That means the threat to insurers has grown as well… the insurance industry lost money on homeowners coverage in 18 states last year”.

  2. Insurers are pulling back coverage in surprising places
    States across the Midwest, Southeast, and West have “seen insurance companies stop writing homeowners insurance, or [make] it harder to qualify for coverage… They’re also raising rates by 50 percent or more in some places.” The challenge facing the homeowners insurance market “is probably unparalleled in recent decades”.

  3. The consequences of that pullback could affect the broader economy
    “A breakdown in homeowners insurance doesn’t just affect people who struggle to get coverage. Without insurance, banks won’t issue a mortgage; without a mortgage, most people can’t buy a home. Fewer prospective buyers can push home values down, which means less property tax revenue and less money for local government services.”

  4. States are intervening in different ways
    “State officials agree the trends aren’t good. They don’t agree on how to respond.” Some states are trying to make it easier for insurers to raise premiums; others are trying to reduce insurer losses by encouraging homeowners to make their properties more resilient; yet others are setting up high-risk state-supported coverage pools for homeowners who can’t get coverage on the private market.

Wildfire Wednesdays #134: Wildfire Preparedness Day 2024

Happy Wednesday, FAC Friends!

National Wildfire Preparedness Day, held annually on the first Saturday in May, is celebrating its ten-year anniversary this Saturday, May 4, 2024! We invite you to join thousands of individuals and communities across the United States in devoting anywhere from a few hours to the entire day performing a variety of tasks to reduce the risk of damage or destruction by wildfire to homes and property. Since 2014, this nationwide day of effort has been coordinated by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in collaboration with Fire Adapted Communities and State Farm Insurance. While NFPA produced educational printed materials and other resources focused on wildfire prevention for many years, partnering with insurance companies and learning networks enabled them to expand their outreach efforts. The effort has grown over the past decade, giving participants a chance to network, connect with others in their communities partaking in the effort, and work with organizations they may not typically think of when smoke is in the air.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Happy May Day! Stay cool and connected.
Rachel

An Overview: Wildfire Preparedness Day

Each year, Wildfire Community Preparedness Day actively encourages groups and individuals living in wildfire-prone areas to complete projects that can help make their homes and communities safer from wildfire. As co-sponsors of Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, NFPA and State Farm are working to celebrate the campaign’s positive impact on countless homes and communities over the past decade.

With a vested interest in property loss reduction and personal safety, State Farm has played an active role in supporting the campaign since its inception. This year, to encourage participation during the campaign’s 10-year anniversary, NFPA and State Farm are offering a free banner to the first 100 people who develop a campaign project or event and post it online. This can be done by filling out the online form that tracks and maps community participation in the campaign nationwide.

“As wildfires continue to present an ever-growing threat to households nationwide, more communities are recognizing the power of teaming up to proactively address them. I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve seen over time and fully expect that the level of participation and enthusiasm in Wildfire Community Preparedness Day will continue to grow this momentous year and beyond.”
— Lorraine Carli, NFPA vice president of Outreach and Advocacy

Wildfire Community Preparedness Day provides science-based steps people can take to reduce or remove potential fire hazards from a home and its immediate surroundings – known as the “home ignition zone” – to help protect from embers and radiant heat from wildfires. Typical activities might include simple, low-cost home improvement projects such as clearing dead leaves, debris, and pine needles from roofs and gutters; keeping lawns and native grasses mowed to a height of four inches; or removing anything stored underneath decks or porches that could burn.

For more information about Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, project ideas, and free resources to download and share, including a campaign toolkit, visit wildfireprepday.org.

 

Resources for May 4

Where to start: an instructional video
On April 4, NFPA hosted a Facebook Live event in support of Wildfire Community Preparedness Day on May 4. Watch the video here to get helpful tips and the resources you need to start planning for a Prep Day event in your area.

Easy guidelines: Wildfire Preparedness Factsheet
This easy-to-share factsheet can help others in your community learn more about Wildfire Preparedness Day and what they can do to make a difference. “Studies show that measures taken at the home and in the area within 100 feet of it, known as the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ), have a significant impact on minimizing damage and loss. Something as simple as clearing the immediate 5-foot zone around the home can assist in making a huge difference in avoiding a catastrophe.”

Wildfire Community Preparedness Day Toolkit
This year, Preparedness Day is focused on what residents can do on and around their home to help protect against the threat of wildfires. The Prep Day toolkit provides a list of project ideas, safety tips, and more, to help guide you towards event day.

Local Wildfire Preparedness Events

Many community leaders and members, including FACNM Leaders, have hosted or are gearing up to facilitate Wildfire Preparedness Events in their communities on or around Wildfire Prep Day! Ahead of the annual event, FACNM received funding from WPD parent organization, NFPA, and has distributed nearly $20,000 to support 12 local events for members and leaders. This is made possible through the semi-annual FACNM microgrants award program. Read on to learn about some of the events happening around the state and to find motivation to host the next wildfire preparedness day in your community!

Ready, Set, Go: A Wildfire Preparedness Workshop, presented by Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network and Villages of Santa Fe.

A panel on How Does the Threat of Wildfire Affect Your Home Owner's Insurance answers audience questions. Photo courtesy of FACNM Leader Ann Church.

It was a typical Santa Fe spring day this past Saturday, April 27, at Christ Church, starting with snow and ending with sunshine. More than 50 attendees gathered for a variety of presentations and activities related to community wildfire preparedness. The SimTable captivated audiences with its ability to visually project fire traveling in and around Santa Fe, translating the idea from abstract concept to concrete representation. A presentation on Go Kits sparked great conversations about what it really means to be prepared and have a plan when fire arrives. Home Hazard Assessments, presented by Alyssa Mineau from the Forest Stewards Guild, provided participants with a actionable starting point for working on their homes and communities. By the end of the day, several HOA and community leaders had expressed interest in presenting the Ready, Set, Go! program to their neighborhoods – a great example of how community preparedness events motivate and expand community outreach. Mayor Alan Webber gave opening remarks and a reporter from the Santa Fe New Mexican covered the event.
A new presentation, How Does the Threat of Wildfire Affect Your Home Owner's Insurance, sparked some great questions from the audience. The panel, moderated by Madeline Carey, gave an overview of what residents of the Santa Fe area can expect, including how to respond to insurance companies and the threat of losing coverage. Panelists included Lou Macias and Melissa Robertson from the Office of Superintendent of Insurance, Chris Schaum from Chris's Tree Service, and George Ducker, Wildfire Prevention & Communications Coordinator from The New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) Forestry Division. The Realtor Association expressed interest in presenting the program to local realtors.

Other Community Wildfire Preparedness Day events organized by FACNM Leaders and Members around the state

La Barbaria Canyon and Tesuque will both be holding chipper events and community green slash disposal days on May 4.

Santa Fe Audubon Society will be preparing an educational defensible space forest thinning demonstration area within the next year. Keep an ear out for opening announcements!

Taos Pines will hold their annual fire preparedness meeting over the July 4 weekend, reminding existing residents and educating new residents on personal and community fire preparedness practices and resources.

Turley Mill HOA is hosting a workshop to teach residents about defensible space.

Brazos Firewise Community will hold a community chipper event and community green slash disposal day over the summer.

And more…

FACNM is proud to support members and leaders leading the charge for fire readiness in their communities. Keep an eye on this page to read all about events and efforts funded through the microgrant award program over the summer. To learn more and become eligible to receive a microgrant award, consider joining the learning network as a member or leader.

Upcoming Events, News, and Resources

May Wildlife Webinars

Over the past 5 years, community volunteers from the Weminuche Audubon Society have conducted a study of bird communities in Ponderosa Pine-dominated forested sites that received wildland fuels reduction treatments. This webinar from the Forest Stewards Guild dives into the effects of these treatments, specifically prescribed fire or shrub-layer thinning, on the composition of bird communities in the southern Rocky Mountains, showing that tree canopy and shrub-layer composition and structure have important influences on the number of bird species present and the predominate feeding and nesting behaviors of the avian community.

Tuesday, May 14, 2024, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. MT: Bird Population Trends and Climate Effects in Southwestern National Parks

Climate change is considered a major driver of recent avian population declines, particularly in the drought-stricken southwestern United States. Predicting how bird populations will respond requires understanding the climatic drivers influencing population density across the region’s diverse habitats. In this webinar from the Forest Stewards Guild, Harrison Jones of The Institute for Bird Populations discusses his research modeling breeding-season densities of 50 bird species in relation to spring and summer drought and the timing of North American monsoon rainfall.

In the second webinar of a yearlong Wildlife and Fire series from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and partners, a panel of experts will discuss monitoring and collaboration at multiple scales at the intersection of fire and wildlife. Topics include the study of how fire and thinning may impact several important soil organisms that support forested wildlife habitat, large-scale monitoring of border infrastructure impacts on wildlife, stories from habitat recovery within large wildfire footprints, collaborations to manage sage grouse and their habitat, and observations on intra-agency differences coordinating wildlife management and fire recovery. Register to learn more about monitoring at multiple scales on May 21!

 

Home Hazard Assessments

Wednesday, May 22, 2024, 1:00-2:00pm: Back to Basics: All About Home Hazard Assessments

In this webinar from Fire Adapted Communities NM, knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado will introduce an important fire risk and readiness tool: Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs). Topics covered will include guidance and digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are an important fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them. Join us on May 22 to learn about Home Hazard Assessment and find out how you can access this tool!

What: Webinar on Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs), hosted by FACNM
When: May 22 from 1:00-2:00pm
Where: Zoom; registration is required and a recording will be available
Who: Open to the community with presenters Porfirio Chavarria of City of Santa Fe Fire, Dick Cooke of Village of Ruidoso, and Kyle McCatty of Wildfire Partners.

An in-person Home Hazard Assessment workshop will be held in autumn 2024 in conjunction with the New Mexico Wildland-Urban Fire Summit (WUFS). Registration for the workshop will be announced beginning in August.

 

Funding Opportunities

Community Catalyst Fund Request for Applications
The Community Navigator Program is a program funded by the USDA Forest Service and launched in 2023 to support historically underserved communities in finding and accessing federal funding and partnership support. The Community Catalyst Fund, offered by Coalitions and Collaboratives, is intended to build community-serving organizational capacity towards climate resilience through access to funding and partnerships with the USDA Forest Service. This funding opportunity is designed to accommodate projects of various sizes and scopes, including: capacity building through training, development and staffing; navigation program delivery; knowledge sharing through stories and resource exchange. Learn more!
Awards range from $10,000-$150,000 and currently run on an 11-month timeline.
Applications are due June 6, 2024 by midnight Mountain Time Zone. COCO will hold a Community Catalyst Fund virtual Q&A session on April 30, 2024 at 2pm MT. Register here. Email cnpinfo@co-co.org with any questions.

Happening tomorrow: A Public Event to Become Fire Adapted!

Ready, Set, Go! A Wildfire Preparedness Workshop

Saturday, April 27th, 10 am – 1 pm
Christ Church Santa Fe, 1213 Don Gaspar

Special Topic - How does the Threat of Fire Affect Your Homeowner’s Insurance?

Join us TOMORROW, April 27, at the family-friendly Ready, Set, Go! Wildfire Preparedness Workshop! Learn from experts, enjoy refreshments, and spend some time in community taking positive steps to build a Fire Adapted Community. Get information and help from the experts from the Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network, Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, Forest Stewards Guild, City of Santa Fe Fire Department, Villages of Santa Fe, Christ Church Santa Fe, and AARP New Mexico. Doors open at 10:00 am and the event runs through 1:00 pm at Christ Church Santa Fe on the corner of Cordova and Don Gaspar. The workshops are free and open to the public and the site offers plenty of free parking.

Refreshments provided by the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Santa Fe.

Learn from the experts about:

Preparing your home for 2024 fire season

  • Conduct your own home assessment OR schedule a FREE assessment, complete with a mitigation work plan

  • Take positive steps that reduce the risk of your home igniting

  • Create a Fire Adapted Community based on your specific neighborhood

  • Understanding home insurance challenges in today’s market

Emergency Preparation

  • Get real-time alerts about wildfires and other emergencies in Santa Fe

  • Create a ‘Go Kit’ with supplies and important family information

  • Prepare an emergency plan for your family

Wildfire Modeling

  • Simtable creates wildfire and smoke simulations to show how fire and smoke spread through communities and how a Fire Adapted Community can reduce risk.

Wildfire Science

  • Learn how a Fire Adapted Community can create a safe and resilient community where fire plays its natural role without destroying lives and property

4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference - Save the Date!

The Southwest Fire Science Journey: Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising Horizons

November 18-22, 2024 // Santa Fe, NM // La Fonda on the Plaza

To learn more about the conference, visit https://swfireconference.org

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Arizona Wildfire Initiative, and the Association for Fire Ecology invite your participation in the 4th Southwest Fire Ecology Conference this November! This event is a gathering space for aspiring and established professionals to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and discuss the latest advancements in fire ecology research and management with a focus on the future of the southwestern United States. Save the date and plan to attend for a unique opportunity to connect with colleagues in the field and engage in stimulating discussions that will help shape the emerging profession and growing field of fire ecology in this region. The call for proposals is open now and registration opens on July 1; see other important dates.

Call for Proposals is now open

The Call for Proposals is now open for workshops, special sessions, fire circle discussions, oral presentations, and poster presentations. With the conference theme, The Southwest Fire Science Journey: Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising Horizons, the group seeks to gain a better understanding of the past, present, and future of fire ecology and management in this region. The group invites proposals on topics related to fire ecology, science, and management with a focus on results and lessons learned that are applicable to the Southwest.

Proposal Due Dates:

To submit a proposal or to learn more, visit https://swfireconference.org/cfp/

  • May 15: Proposals Due for Special Sessions and Workshops

  • July 15: Proposals Due for Oral Presentations

  • August 15: Proposals Due for Poster Presentations and Meetings/Activities

The Theme: Past, Present, and Future

Lessons from the Rearview, New and Unfamiliar Routes, and Promising New Horizons

As wildland fire scientists, managers, educators, and students in the Southwest, we find ourselves in an era of rapid change and in need of new approaches, well-planned investments, and meaningful collaborations. Typical land and fire management strategies no longer suffice in the face of escalating challenges posed by more intense fires and the impacts of climate change on precipitation patterns and temperatures. While recent and substantial investments aim to tackle these issues, they often operate on timelines that are misaligned with natural processes. Simultaneously, a cultural shift is imperative—one that recognizes our integral connection to fire-prone lands, embraces the evolving reality of wildfire and ecosystem transition, and equally respects the knowledge held by Indigenous and land grant communities of the Southwest.

Smoke column over I-5 on November 8, day 1 of the 2018 Camp Fire.

At this pivotal juncture, AFE and its partners advocate for a reflective pause to better understand the past, present, and future of the fire science journey in the southwestern US. The integration of past insights with modern approaches is paramount as we invest in creating resilient landscapes and peoples of tomorrow.

The following topics will be of special interest and focus during this year’s conference:

  • Biodiversity and fire

  • Climate adaptation

  • Collaborative and cross-jurisdictional case studies

  • Cultural fire

  • Education and workforce development

  • Fire-adapted communities and Firewise

  • Invasive species and fire

  • Lessons learned in science and management

  • Planning for resilience in uncertain future

  • Post-fire recovery

Wildfire Wednesdays #133: Technical Assistance for Federal Grants

Hi all,

Spring is a time for action when it comes to wildfire mitigation around your home and wildfire resilience in the surrounding landscapes. If you have been interested in taking your wildfire mitigation or landscape resilience implementation to another level, now is a great time to consider applying for funding to achieve these goals. Within the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) there are a variety of funding mechanisms that can support your work. We encourage you to get to know some of these opportunities, because they will only be available for a short period of time.

With that in mind, this Wildfire Wednesday’s is about the Community Navigators Initiative, which is intended to support folks like you with awareness and technical support for accessing federal funding programs.

This Wildfire Wednesdays includes:

  • A recording of the 03/29 webinar about the Community Navigator Initiative

  • Grant News and Updates

  • FACNM sign-up for technical assistance through Community Navigator Initiative

Best,

Gabe

The Community Navigator Initiative

The Fire Adapted New Mexico learning network (FACNM) is working with the Forest Stewards Guild and the Watershed Center, along with several other national and regional nonprofit organizations, is partnering with the US Forest Service on a community navigator initiative. 

The goal of this effort is to connect communities facing wildfire risk and climate change impacts, as well as historically underserved, rural, and low-income communities, to Forest Service funding and partnership opportunities supported by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). For a snapshot of the programs and activities that received funding through these laws, see our overview of BIL & IRA-supported Climate and Wildfire Resilience Funding Opportunities.

Key aspects of FACNM’s community navigator work include:

  • Developing relationships with communities who may benefit from new funding opportunities and connecting them with sources of technical assistance and support within our networks.

  • Creating tools, trainings, and other resources to support organizational capacity-building.

  • Providing individual technical assistance to help communities identify and apply for funding opportunities and comply with post-award financial management and reporting requirements. 

Another important aspect of our work involves elevating community perspectives and feedback about the barriers that communities face in accessing US Forest Service support and partnership, with the goal of helping vision a more equitable system for all. 

The other organizations working on the Forest Service community navigator initiative include Coalitions and Collaboratives, Hispanic Access Foundation, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, First Nations Development Institute, and the American Indian Alaska Native Tourism Association.

Grant News and Updates

All federal grant applicants must be registered with SAM.gov. Register NOW as this process can take weeks and is needed to apply for funding opportunities via Grants.gov. If SAM.gov registration issues arise, contact Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) for free assistance.

IRA Forest Landowner Support

Deadline is August 21, 2024

Provides grant opportunities to entities and organizations delivering technical and financial assistance to private forest landowners - including Tribes, underserved landowners, and small-acreage landowners - to participate in emerging private markets for forest resilience and climate mitigation.

NOFO #1 USDA-FS-2023-IRA-FLS-01:

Supporting Underserved and Small-Acreage Landowner Participation in Emerging Private Markets

Last month, the Forest Service announced the award of the first round of this funding. A total of $116 million was awarded to 20 Forest Landowner Support projects (scroll down to the Spring 2024 dropdown under “Forest Landowner Support Awardees”) to provide equitable access to emerging climate markets. Many of the awardees represent or will support underserved landowners located in or providing benefits to disadvantaged communities.


Funding is still available for proposals under $2 million that support the participation of underserved landowners and landowners owning less than 2,500 acres in emerging private markets for climate mitigation or forest resilience. Proposals for NOFO 1 are reviewed in batches on a quarterly basis:

  • Upcoming batch: All proposals received March 1, 2024 - May 31, 2024.

  • Final batch: All proposals received June 1, 2024 - August 21, 2024
    IRA-FLS NOFO1 Frequently Asked Questions (available in Related Documents under the “full announcement materials” dropdown)

NOFO #2 USDA-FS-2024-IRA-FLS-02:

Tribal Access to Emerging Private Markets for Climate Mitigation or Forest Resilience

The Forest Service’s Forest Landowner Support program has a new funding opportunity focused on Tribal access to emerging private markets for forest resilience or climate mitigation (see announcement here). Eligible applicants include: Federally recognized Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations/Villages, and Tribal Organizations.

IRA-FLS NOFO2 Frequently Asked Questions (available in Related Documents under the “full announcement materials” dropdown)

Resources:

Community Wildfire Defense Grant

Funding communities to 1) develop and revise Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs), or 2) implement projects described in a CWPP that is less than 10 years old. Contact sm.fs.usfs_cwdg@usda.gov for more information.

Round 2 applications are currently being reviewed. The agency received 500 applications requesting $965 million, and has about $250 million in available funding. We are waiting on official announcements about Round 2 awards and Round 3 release.

Resources:

Applicants are highly encouraged to coordinate with their State Forestry Agency (or equivalent) during proposal development. See a list of State Forestry Agencies and State Forest Action Plans here.

FACNM Community Navigator Assistance

CALENDAR: Check out our calendar of events for upcoming application deadlines, trainings, informational webinars and other opportunities coordinated through the Watershed Center.

 ASSISTANCE: Fill out a request form to connect with one of our navigators who can help brainstorm proposal and funding ideas, provide information and insight on funding and resources opportunities, review your application, or help with post-award grant management questions.

FEEDBACK: Have you worked with a community navigator and want to share feedback? We’d love to hear from you! Your response will be used to improve our future services.



Upcoming events: FACNM spring webinars!

FACNM’s spring webinar series is happening March-May 2024!

Join us on April 16 and May 22!

Tuesday, April 16, 12:00-1:00pm MT

Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs): What they are, why they matter, and how to write them
Join FACNM for this this 1-hour webinar on Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs)! Gabe Kohler of the Forest Stewards Guild, Abigail Plecki of New Mexico State Forestry Division, and Kenzie Hartt of The Ember Alliance will introduce the basics of CWPPs, discuss the importance of having a local plan with community input, talk about guidelines and best practices, and review resources and assistance for writing a CWPP. Come with your questions to learn more about Community Wildfire Protection Plans and access guiding resources for your CWPP publication or update!

Wednesday, May 22, 12:00-1:00pm MT

Home Hazard Assessments: Back to Basics: how to assess your property’s wildfire hazard, why knowing your risk matters, and how to talk to your neighbors about collective resilience
In this webinar from Fire Adapted Communities NM, knowledgeable fire and forestry professionals from New Mexico and Colorado will introduce an important fire risk and readiness tool: Home Hazard Assessments (HHAs). Topics covered will include guidance and digital and printed tools to complete HHAs, local partners who can guide the process or travel to complete HHAs on-site alongside property owners and residents, how different Assessment programs are structured, why HHAs are an important fire readiness tool, how county ordinances and insurance providers can influence the need for HHAs, and what opportunities may open up as a result of completing them. Join us on May 22 to learn about Home Hazard Assessment and find out how you can access this tool!

Visit the FACNM Events page to learn more about these webinars and to stay up to date on all of our events, including webinars, workshops, member calls, conferences, and more! Recordings of all FACNM webinars can also be found on the FACNM YouTube page.

Wildfire Wednesdays #132: Wildfire Resilience Science Round-Up

Hello and happy spring, FACNM!

Four years ago this week, Fire Adapted Communities New Mexico started this newsletter with the intent to parse through trustworthy sources for relevant fire preparedness information, recommendations, and tips to bring to readers across the Southwest. The content and format have evolved since its inception, but one essential part of the newsletter has remained constant throughout the years: our commitment to be informed of, and able to incorporate, the best available science into our understanding of fire and our relationship to it. Today’s Wildfire Wednesday revisits some science we’ve shared over the years and shares a round-up of some of the most recent regional fire science from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care and enjoy the spring blooms,
Rachel

Southwest Research Publications

Sharing the latest wildfire research relevant to the Southwest

Selected articles are presented below based on their relevance and accessibility to the public. For a full round-up of the latest science and to view publications from earlier in 2023, visit the SWFSC website!

Open access articles

 
 
 
 

Throwback to Science from Our Sweet Sixteen

Business resilience and wildfire

Living in a fire adapted area means many things, but what does it mean for businesses and the local economy? In May 2019, the Island Park Sustainable Fire Community in Idaho tackled this question. Their ultimate takeaways were that, in practice, business resilience involves both helping to prepare businesses to operate through wildfire and helping businesses thrive in a fire-prone environment. Wildfires pose a serious threat to a community’s continuity and can have devastating effects on the small businesses that depend on it. Business resiliency and risk mitigation strategies help to defend communities from losses and are especially important for small businesses as they experience the highest risk in proximity to wildfire. Read the full write-up to glean all of these lessons learned.

Events and Resources

In the news

2023-2024 All Hands All Lands Winter Pile Squad: a story about fire, snow, wet boots, and building wildfire resilience in northern New Mexico.

About the squad: this StoryMap from the All Hands All Lands Burn Team discusses the concept of AHAL, the work accomplished by this collaborative burn team over winter 2023-2024, and how this work aligns with the stewardship of fire adapted forests and use of prescribed burning as advocated in the Forest Stewards Guild’s 2021 Policy Statement on Fire, Forest Management, and Communities. In light of the 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, federal fire agencies and their partners instituted a strategic pause on all prescribed fire activity, during which they researched and released recommendations on how to make this essential forest and community resiliency tool safer. One key takeaway from the recommendations was the need for larger and more diverse burn teams - that is, more boots on the ground, more eyes on the fire, and more perspectives and a greater breadth of experience contributing to the decision of whether or not to burn. The AHAL burn team fills that gap and makes it possible to meet the spirit and letter of this recommendation during collaborative burns. The winter pile squad, active between November and April, adds capacity to the type of prescribed fire which happens during the cooler months - slash pile burning.

Accomplishments: During the winter season, the Pile Squad assisted with 8 controlled burns, helping to accomplish 1,116 acres of high-priority forest restoration. Much of this work was completed in close proximity to communities and was within the wildland-urban interface (WUI). When not actively burning or patrolling, the pile squad assisted with forest thinning and slash management to prepare for future burns in areas such as the Rio de Las Trampas Forest Council’s Community Forestry plot in between the communities of Trampas and El Valle. They also invested in training and hands-on experiences with city and county fire departments to advance their professional skillsets.

 

Webinars

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: What is the Community Navigators Program?
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource. Learn more by visiting the FACNM Events page!

 

Learn more and register for the full spring webinar series from FACNM at www.facnm.org/events

 

Wildfire Wednesdays #131: Old Growth Forest

Today’s blog was co-written by Zander Evans and Rachel McCullough, Executive Director and 2024 intern at the Forest Stewards Guild.

Hello FACNM friends,

What do old trees and forests have to do with wildfire? In turns out, there is an important connection! Old growth forests play essential roles in our forests related to wildlife habitat, species diversity, hydrological regimes, nutrient cycles, carbon storage, and numerous other ecological processes. They support rich biodiversity due to the unique structures and habitat features that they develop over long periods of time. Areas of old forest in ecosystems adapted to frequent fire often have patches of large trees interspersed with grassy openings and canopy gaps. However, these forests can be negatively impacted by uncharacteristic (hot, fast-moving, high severity) fire and other impacts of a changing climate. New efforts to conserve and protect old growth have brought these important parts of the forest to center stage.  

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
-Rachel

The Story of Fire and Old Trees

What is old growth?

Old growth forests can generally be defined as those dominated by large, old trees, both live and dead, standing and fallen, that usually contain many other smaller trees. Old growth forests can occur anywhere, though usually they are found in areas protected from disturbance. These old forests are rare, and unfortunately becoming rarer every day due to natural disturbances like fire, human disturbance where old growth isn’t protected, and the warming and drying climate.

Because old trees and old-growth forests are rare, they add diversity to forest ecosystems with their uncommon characteristics. Old-growth forests have structures such as large trees, large downed logs, and standing dead trees that are not present in young or maturing forests. The unique structures and attributes of old growth forests provide habitat for plant and animal species not found in other forest types. They also play important roles in hydrological regimes, nutrient cycles, and numerous other ecological processes. In addition to the biodiversity, wildlife habitat, hydrologic function, and carbon storage it supports, old growth is valued for recreation, aesthetics, inspiration, or even spiritual reasons. 

Old growth and fire in New Mexico

In Redwood National Park, large live trees are interspersed with decadent dead and down snags and logs.

When you picture ‘old growth’, the image that comes to mind is likely decadent redwood or giant sequoia forests in the Pacific Northwest. Did you know that we also have old trees and old growth forest here in the Southwest? Old tree stands have characteristics such as variable tree size and spacing, accumulation of dead standing and fallen trees, decay, multiple canopy layers, gaps, and dominant large trees. These old trees are far less abundant today than they were in the mid-1800s, before the arrival of the railroad brought clearcut logging and a thriving timber industry. Luckily, New Mexico’s boom-and-bust timber industry had a limited reach due to the challenging terrain, roadless landscape, and associated financial costs, and old growth trees still persist in mid-elevation forested areas across the state.

A 7’ scar, partially healed over, on a large mature ponderosa pine tree in the Pecos Wilderness.

Ponderosa pine trees, a dominant fire-adapted species in New Mexico, begin to develop old growth characteristics between 200 and 300 years of age. They can be identified by their thick bark and fire scars (a place where fire has burned through the bark and damaged a portion of the trunk but the tree has survived and healed over the wound). Characteristics of old ponderosa pines include orange-yellow to occasionally grey bark with large, smooth plates; raised, relatively open, flattened crowns (there is a lot of distance between the ground and the first branch, the branches are not too crowded along the trunk, and the top of the tree is rounded rather than pointed); large-diameter branches; and evidence of past disturbances such as fire scars, lightning-strike scars, or a damaged top. Frequent-fire forests with old trees often have a high canopy and uncrowded understory due to frequent low intensity fire keeping the stands open and preventing shade tolerant competitors from establishing. Keep an eye out on your next stroll through the woods for large-diameter thick-barked trees, especially in drainages and remote areas!

While trees like ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir are resistant to low severity fire when they are old, they can be killed by high intensity wildfires that climb into the forest crown and burn very hot. Ecologically-based stewardship is focused on reducing the risk of high intensity wildfire through thinning and controlled burns – in part to protect these rare, old trees. During controlled burns, old trees are protected by raking litter and duff away from their trunks. This reduces the amount of combustible material around these old trees and helps ensure the low intensity burns don’t smolder and kill their roots or cambium. Restoration work which thins the forest to historic levels can help maturing trees grow larger and become the old trees of the future. Thinning reduces the competition for water and nutrients between trees and helps remaining trees survive drought, grow larger more quickly, and become more resilient to pests, disease, and a hotter and drier climate. 

New Federal Policies to Conserve Old Forests

An amendment to the National Forest Plan

On April 22, 2022, the Biden Administration issued Executive Order 14072, which directs the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of the Interior to define, inventory, identify threats towards, and develop policies to mitigate threats to, mature and old growth forests.

In response, the US Forest Service has proposed a National Forest Plan Amendment that would make long-term resilience the primary objective for forests with old growth characteristics. In addition to ensuring old growth forests persist into the future, the Plan Amendment will foster mature and maturing forests to become the old growth of the future.

An old growth alligator juniper in the Gila National Forest showing a rare hollowed fire scar at the base of its split trunk.

As part of the federal effort to protect old forests, researchers conducted a nation-wide inventory and found 32 million acres of old growth forests. Of that total, 1.3 million acres is comprised of ponderosa pine and 9 million acres is made up of piñon-juniper forests, two dominant forest types in the Southwest. Researchers used that same federal Forest Inventory and Analysis to determine that since the year 2000, we have lost 712,000 acres of old growth to wildfire, 182,000 acres to insects and disease, and 9,000 acres to tree cutting on lands managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Even more worrisome is the prediction that by the end of the century, 90 percent of old-growth forests will be at very high exposure to wildfire-caused mortality and nearly 60 percent will be exposed to drought.  

Ahead of the curve, close to home

While the proposed National Forest Plan Amendment would increase the conservation of old trees nationally, it is unlikely to change management in many forest restoration areas across New Mexico - such as the Santa Fe Fireshed and the Zuni Mountains Landscape - because protection of old and large trees has been a priority in these areas for many years. In 2006, a wide range of groups including federal and state interests and nongovernmental organizations came together to codify their agreement in the New Mexico Forest Restoration Principles. These Principles emphasized the restoration of ecosystem composition, maintenance of watershed and soil integrity, and notably in this context, preservation of old or large trees while maintaining structural diversity and resilience. 

In 2015, after years of ecological monitoring and collaborative forest management, the Cibola National Forest and Grasslands Forest Supervisor made an adaptive management decision that would change the way that trees were marked for restoration thinning. The Old and Large Tree Retention Strategy was implemented for all projects occurring within the Zuni Mountain Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project (CFLRP) area, marking a success in maintaining existing old growth and as well as mature trees that have the potential to develop into old growth.

Learn more about federal policy on mature and old growth forests through this January 2024 webinar recording from the Forest Stewards Guild. In the video, Dr. Zander Evans provides background on what has happened since the issuance of Executive Order 14072 and the next steps in the process. Rhiley Allbee provides an analysis of mature and old growth forest in Collaborative Landscape Restoration efforts. 

Events, Announcements, and Additional Resources

Webinars

FACNM Spring Webinar Series 2024

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: What is the Community Navigators Program?
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource. Learn more by visiting the FACNM Events page!

Tuesday, April 16 from 12:00-1:00pm: Community Wildfire Protection Plans
Join NM Forestry Division and The Ember Alliance to hear about CWPPs - the basics, importance of, resources and support for, and relevance to county ordinances and homeowners insurance - during the second webinar in FACNM’s spring series.

Wednesday, May 22 from 1:00-2:00pm: Home Hazard Assessments: Back to Basics
Join NM Forestry Division and The Ember Alliance to hear about CWPPs - the basics, importance of, resources and support for, and relevance to county ordinances and homeowners insurance - during the second webinar in FACNM’s spring series.

Review the entire series at www.facnm.org/events or by downloading the flyer!

View our archive of webinar recordings anytime by visiting the FACNM YouTube page!

Cal FSC Webinar Series

April 2024: Fire Use Around the World: Purposes, Principles, Policies, and Practices
In this webinar series from the California Fire Science Consortium, a survey of prescribed fire from around the globe is presented. It focuses on seven topic areas: fuel management; rangeland and landscape management; management of production forests; wildlife management; monitoring and datasets; and ecological restoration and cultural fire.

……….

Resources for Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) applications

Cycle 3 of the Community Wildfire Defense Grant program will open in mid-2024. For organizations and collaboratives interested in applying, some resources have become available. These resources are subject to change and will be updated throughout the spring and summer as the CWDG deadline approaches.

  • forestrygrants.org provides access to CWDG Cycle 1 and 2 applications that were awarded or scored high.

  • Recordings of grant-writing workshops that provide more context, questions, and conversations are available on the New Mexico Forestry Division Facebook page

  • Wildfire risk

  • Access Forestry Division’s New Mexico Forest Action Plan. The objectives and goals outlined in this document should be referenced in CWDG applications from New Mexico.

Wildfire Wednesdays #130: Preparing for Wildfire Community Preparedness Day

Happy Wednesday, FACNM readers!

With recent gusty winds and grass fires on the eastern plains, FACNM is looking ahead to the not-so-distant summer fire preparedness planning. Wildfire Community Preparedness Day, held annually in the United States and Canada on the first Saturday in May, is a great place to kick off with your own readiness plans. Each year, the campaign actively encourages groups and individuals living in wildfire-prone areas to come together on a single day to raise awareness and reduce wildfire risks by completing projects that can help make their homes and communities safer from wildfire. This year, the day of action will be held on Saturday, May 4. FACNM will be offering ideas, resources, and local opportunities over the next couple of months to help communities prepare for and get involved with Wildfire Prep Day 2024.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care as we leap(year) into March!
-Rachel

The Power of Community Action in Wildfire Prep

“As wildland fires increasingly involve residential areas, communities have to take action to help mitigate the potential effects of wildfire. However, residents can be uncertain about what to do, reluctant to get involved, or unclear about the impact they can have. As resources are stretched to cope with suppression and restoration efforts,” local community members and leaders play an increasingly important role in promoting and enabling wildfire preparedness.

Collective action means working together to be prepared, vigilant, proactive, and to prioritize resilience over complacency and face the challenge of wildfires head-on. Community in wildfire preparedness is valuable for many reasons. “As residents, [community members and leaders] understand [their neighbors] and are able to encourage mitigation and preparedness in a number of ways, including:

  • Helping to identify important local issues and create a vision for action.

  • Developing a preparedness strategy that takes community members’ goals into account.

  • Obtaining commitment to act by communicating with other residents and building one-on-one relationships. [This emphasizes] the importance of individuals taking on responsibilities that benefit the community.

  • Mobilizing financial and material resources.” (Lang et al, 2006)

Image courtesy of FireSmart Canada

While individual actions to prepare homes, kids, pets, belongings, and businesses for wildfire are an essential element of fire readiness, coming together as a community to learn, assess collective risk, and reduce fire hazards can motivate and amplify the work of becoming fire adapted.

Wildfire Prep Day Ideas and Resources

Prep Day Dashboards

NFPA
Wildfire Community Preparedness Day - commonly shortened to Wildfire Prep Day - focuses on what you can do in and around your home to help protect against the threat of wildfires. The annual event is organized by the National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA) and sponsored by State Farm. To help you get ready, NFPA offers:

View the NFPA 2024 Prep Day press release.

Another general toolkit: wildfire.gov offers additional information and resources to prepare for all stages: before, during, and after the fire.

FAC Net
Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network offers a Community Prep Day Menu with a plethora of project ideas for individuals and leaders! Those community organizers who are interested in convening a preparedness event in their neighborhood, city, or county can get inspired by these tried-and-true project ideas:

  • Fuels removal: secure funding and organize with your local contractors to hold a community chipper or green waste day.

  • Assessments: partner with an organization such as your fire department to bring existing assessment programs to your community.

  • Education: work with local fire ecologists, fire personnel, and businesses to host an educational day in the woods, community center, or downtown. Invite your guests to talk about fire science, discuss how fires impact businesses and tourism, and tell their personal wildfire stories.

  • Build awareness: partner with your local fire department to bring an engine to the neighborhood! Post up at a stop sign, local park, or entrance road to create a W.U.I. Checkpoint (Wildland-Urban Interface). This activity is modeled after D.U.I. checkpoints, with a play on words. Give vehicles information about fire preparedness as you stop them.

  • Mitigation fair: create an interactive fair: arrange 5-7 stations on various fire preparedness topics with a call to action - some actionable takeaway for participants - at each station. Attendees will visit different stations to learn how to safely and effectively mitigate wildfire risk on their property.

Learn more and get inspired by reading FAC Net’s 2023 Wildfire Prep Day article: All Projects Big and Small.

……..

Assessing Community and Individual Risk

Is your community prepared for fire? How can you and your partners improve your resilience? Use the Fire Adapted Communities Self-Assessment Tool (FAC SAT) to find out! FAC SAT was created to help communities assess their fire adaptation efforts and to plan and track their capacity to live safely with fire over time. This tool can be used to assess individual neighborhoods, cities and even large counties. FAC SAT is a PDF document containing a series of questions. Completing the assessment is a four-step process. Detailed information about who should be involved and how long the process takes can be found in the FAC SAT User and Facilitator’s Guide.

……..

Tailoring the Fire Prep Approach to Your Community

The Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool (Pathways Tool) helps users identify a range of fire adaptation practices and resources that research and experience indicate are more likely to work in the places they live and work.

This tool combines decades of research on community wildfire adaptation with practitioner-based knowledge and experience. It helps users identify a community, determine an initial “community archetype” and suggest fire adaptation practices, tools and approaches suited to similar communities. The Pathways Tool then helps users create a ‘pathway’ that is tailored to their community conditions. The tool is also intended to inform progress on fire adaptation across varied regions, identify the most effective programs, grants or assistance for supporting community adaptation, and to demonstrate the diverse needs for wildfire adaptation to promote equity in ongoing fire resilience work.
Learn more, access the Pathways Tool, and watch a recording of the introductory webinar.

……..

Additional Wildfire Prep Resources

The Community Wildfire Planning Center provides a number of resources for planning the Wildland-Urban Interface, including guidance for adopting defensible space ordinances, opportunities for risk assessments through programs like REALFire, links to State and National WUI planning resources, and more. Explore the CWPC website.

Events, Announcements, and Additional Resources

Webinars

Friday, March 29 from 12:00-1:00pm: Community Navigators Program
FACNM is launching its spring webinar series beginning on March 29th! Join Gabe Kohler and Emery Cowan as they introduce the national and regional intent of the Community Navigators Program and discuss how communities across the state can access this resource.
Keep an eye on the FACNM Events page to learn more and register for additional webinars in the spring series!

Recording available: The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Report
Neil Chapman with the Flagstaff Fire Department joined the Forest Stewards Guild in mid-February to explain the formation and process enacted by the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, including the publication and impact of the 2023 Commission Report.

Funding Opportunities

The Department of the Interior has launched a pilot project to help local government agencies convert vehicles for use as wildland fire engines. Agencies serving areas with a population of 25,000 or less are eligible to apply, with applications being accepted through March 21. See the press announcement for details and visit Grants.gov to apply.

In the News

Air Quality
Early this month the U.S. EPA strengthened the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particle pollution (PM2.5). They have released several fact sheets about this rule change, including “Final Updates to the Air Quality Index…”, “Implementing the Final Rule …”, and “Wildland Fire, Air Quality, and Public Health Considerations”. Last week, the EPA, USDA Forest Service and health and land management agencies in Oregon and Washington recognized the important role of prescribed fire for public health and ecosystem resilience in their “Joint Statement of Intent to Cooperate on Prescribed Fire and Smoke Management.”
For some variations on one approach to helping community members mitigate smoke exposure, see the Fire Networks blog post “Cleaner Air, One Filter at a Time: Stories from FAC Net’s Community Clean Air Project.”

Wildfire Wednesdays #129: Innovations in Biomass Utilization

Hello Wildfire Wednesday readers,

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today, we’re going to get extra romantic and talk about a critical and evolving aspect of hazardous fuels reduction—disposal of slash and leftover small diameter woody material. This has traditionally been viewed as a waste product due to its minimal value in commercial markets and is usually disposed of by piling and burning or scattering or chipping and leaving onsite to decompose. Alternative methods to utilize these materials are gaining momentum as new products are developed and marketed, presenting exciting opportunities for increased revenue for landowners, job creation, and benefits to the environment, our forested landscapes, and the soil. There are opportunities to partake at both the landscape and individual scale, with accessible technologies such as backyard biochar production. The alternatives outlined below can help reshape the ways we approach slash disposal as communities and organic yard waste disposal as residents.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Read on!
-Dayl

What is Biomass Utilization?

Biomass utilization refers to the conversion of recently harvested organic materials into energy or various bio-based products. Biomass can include a wide range of materials such as wood, crop residues, and agricultural by-products. The goal of biomass utilization is to create value-added products for wide-ranging applications or harness the energy stored in these organic materials.

There are many ways in which biomass can be utilized:

  1. Bioenergy production: Biomass can be used to generate heat, electricity, or biofuels. Common processes for bioenergy production include combustion, gasification, and fermentation.

  2. Bioproducts: Biomass can be processed to extract valuable bioproducts such as building materials and biofuels. Some unique examples of bioproducts include Woodstraw for erosion control and Wood Wool Cement board for construction.

  3. Biochar production: Biomass pyrolysis can produce biochar, a carbon-rich material that can be applied to soil to improve fertility, carbon sequestration, and overall soil health. Mobile technologies such as the air curtain burner may allow for biochar production directly within a forest treatment worksite (as opposed to hauling biomass offsite for biochar production).

  4. Anaerobic digestion: Organic waste and biomass can undergo anaerobic digestion, a biological process that produces biogas (methane and carbon dioxide) as a renewable energy source and also generates digestate, a nutrient-rich fertilizer.

  5. Co-firing: Biomass can be co-fired with coal in power plants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition towards cleaner energy sources.

These technologies present a new opportunity to close the loop in hazardous fuels reduction and augment traditional methods such as pile burning, which can impact air quality with emissions, and onsite decomposition, which fails to fully reduce fire risk by leaving the hazardous fuels in place. Leveraging woody biomass sourced from public lands has the potential to not only reduce carbon dioxide emissions but also to grow rural economies. The biomass that is created through hazardous fuel treatments can be extracted and repurposed for bioenergy and bioproducts, offering a sustainable and multifaceted solution.

It’s not as simple as just implementing these new strategies, however. The forest products industry faces significant challenges in implementing large-scale forest restoration projects due to constraints including limited capacity, regulatory barriers, disruptions in supply chains, workforce shortages, logistics hurdles, and a lack of viable markets. One response to these barriers is the Wood Innovations Grant established by the Forest Service to facilitate the expansion of wood and biomass utilization.

Examples of Biomass Utilization in Action

SWERI Wood Utilization Team
With the support of a Wood Innovations Grant, the Wood Innovations and Utilization Team at the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) was born. The objective of the project is to establish a center of expertise and provide crucial support for the development of forest-based enterprises. These interconnected operations will generate markets that support the restoration of forests and grasslands in the Southwest, create jobs and expand rural economies, and align with watershed protection and fire prevention. Read more in this article from Northern Arizona University.

Placer County, California - Forest Biomass Removal on National Forest Lands
Placer County is exploring and prioritizing projects that collect, process, transport, and utilize woody forest biomass wastes for renewable energy as an alternative to pile burning or mastication. In a public-private partnership demonstration project (report (PDF)/video), over 6,000 tons of slash from fuel hazard reduction treatments in the Tahoe National Forest were utilized for energy. In addition, the state of California Forest Biomass to Carbon-Negative Biofuels Pilot Program funded six projects that demonstrate technologies and plans for the creation of energy from local forest biomass.

What is Biochar?

Biochar is a type of charcoal that is created through the pyrolysis process, which involves burning organic material derived from agriculture, forestry, or - on a smaller scale - yard waste. This process occurs in a container with very low levels of oxygen, resulting in minimal smoke and volatiles emissions. You may have already made biochar on your own - perhaps when extinguishing a campfire or a woodstove at the end of a night by dousing it with water or smothering it with dirt - without even knowing it! The natural charcoal that results is the same material as biochar.

Biochar is very useful as a soil amendment, enhancing water and nutrient retention and attracting beneficial microbes via its incredible porosity and negative surface charge. Beyond its soil-enhancing properties, biochar serves as an effective method for sequestering carbon in the soil and preventing it from entering the atmosphere. Typically, the decomposition of organic matter emits greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane. However, through pyrolysis, the carbon in organic matter is locked into a decay-resistant form, effectively sequestering it indefinitely.

How to make biochar in your backyard

Making biochar in your backyard is a relatively simple process that can be accomplished with basic materials. Here's a step-by-step guide.

(You can also find a cornucopia of resources and instructional videos by doing a quick online search. Each method is going to vary slightly from the next, showing that there are many “correct” ways of making biochar!)

What you’ll need:

  • Metal barrel or in-ground open pit: You'll need a metal container with air holes punched in the bottom or a cone-shaped pit dug into the ground. The air holes in the bottom of your metal barrel will pull air up from the narrow point in the bottom of the hole, removing oxygen from the feedstock. The conical shape of the pit will do the same (it should be about as deep as it is wide). The Quivira Coalition offers biochar kiln loans to support people doing their own land stewardship!

  • Starting material: Dry wood, paper, or other fine woody debris can be used to start the combustion process. Dry tumbleweeds are an effective and satisfying starter. These materials will be layered on top of the pile that you are burning.

  • Biomass feedstock: Collect woody biomass, such as branches, twigs, or pruned tree limbs to build your pile, and keep some finer materials aside to continually feed the fire once pyrolysis has begun.

  • Safety gear: Protect yourself by wearing gloves, pants, and long sleeves and have plenty of water onsite in case anything gets out of hand.

Steps to make backyard biochar:

  1. Gather and load biomass:

    • Fill the barrel or fire pit with the dry woody material, making sure not to overfill it. Put fine fuels (kindling) on top of the pile in a dense, thick layer.

    • Four pounds of biomass can make close to one pound of biochar, depending on materials and the efficiency of the burn.

  2. Ignition:

    • Using your preferred lighting technique, start burning the pile by igniting the kindling layer on top of your feedstock. A propane torch is the easiest way to evenly light the kindling layer.

    • As the kindling is consumed, continue to add more kindling on top. This will keep air moving upwards and encourage the feedstock layer below to catch fire.

  3. Pyrolysis process:

    • As the biomass undergoes pyrolysis, it will release gases and leave behind biochar.

    • Keep adding more kindling materials on top as it burns down. The purpose of this is to keep the fire on top of the feedstock to burn away the smoke as it comes off.

    • The flame will be mostly yellow as it consumes gases, and little to no smoke will be produced.

  4. Monitoring:

    • Keep an eye on the process to ensure that the biochar doesn't turn into ash due to excessive oxygen. Once you see ash starting to form, start layering more biomass on top in an even layer to keep oxygen levels low.

    • If you see lots of smoke forming, you may be adding too much material too fast.

  5. Quenching:

    • When all of your feedstock has turned into a pile of red-hot coals, it is time to quench the fire!

    • Using a hose, thoroughly douse the coal bed. Rake the wet coals to find hot spots and re-wet as needed until it’s cold.

    • You can also quench the fire by piling a layer of soil on top. This will stop the flow of oxygen and prevent your feedstock from turning to ash.

  6. Collecting biochar:

    • After a day or two of cooling and drying out, carefully collect the biochar. The biochar should be brittle and crumble easily in your hands.

  7. Crushing or grinding (optional):

    • If desired, crush or grind the biochar to achieve a more uniform particle size. This can enhance its effectiveness when incorporated into the soil.

  8. Incorporating into soil/compost:

    • Incorporating biochar into a compost pile first can be beneficial, as this will “charge” the micropores of the biochar with nutrients.

    • Incorporate the biochar compost mix into your garden soil at a recommended ratio of around 5-10%.

*Remember to conduct biochar production in a well-ventilated outdoor area, away from flammable materials, and be cautious about fire safety! Additionally, be aware of local burning and air quality regulations.*

Additional Resources, Events, and Funding

Webinars

Hosted by the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and co-hosted by the Arizona Wildfire Initiative.
Following a severe wildfire, recovery efforts can benefit from using “Engineering With Nature” principles to utilize existing materials on the landscape for slope stabilization, erosion control, and stream restoration. Join presenter Chris Haring of the USACE-Engineering Research and Development Center to learn about the successes and lessons learned with these techniques in Santa Clara Canyon, NM after the destructive Las Conchas Fire.

Hosted by the Forest Stewards Guild.
This special Lunch and Learn webinar will cover the 2023 Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission report. Presenter Neil Chapman, Wildland Fire Captain with the Flagstaff Fire Department and Commission member, will discuss the 2021 creation of the 50-member Commission, its mission to recommend improvements to how federal agencies manage wildfire across the landscape, and the recommendation creation process, outcomes, and next steps following publication of the Commission's report.

Learn more and read the report with its 148 final recommendations.

In-Person Learning Exchange

Saturday, February 24 from 10am - 2pm: Bernalillo County Pile Burn Workshop

This Bernalillo County workshop for forest and fire practitioners and interested landowners will cover a variety of topics related to pile burning, such as writing prescriptions, pile construction, PPE, containment, and permitting. The workshop will include both classroom and field components and will introduce attendees to the State's Certified Burn Manager Program. Lunch will be provided to participants and registration is required.

Agenda:
10:00am – Classroom: State burner program, prescriptions, permitting
12:00pm – Field: Pile construction, containment, PPE
2:00pm – Wrap up

Funding Opportunities

FACNM Microgrant Opportunity to fund your community fire preparedness event: FACNM Leaders and Members are eligible to apply for grants awards of up to $2,000 to provide financial assistance for:

  • Convening wildfire preparedness events,

  • Enabling on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • Developing grant proposals for the sustainable longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

Round 2 is open through February 28, 2024.

Grant Opportunity for Slip-on Tanker Units: This new pilot program from the Department of the Interior will fund local governments to purchase slip-on tanker units, allowing them to quickly convert trucks and other vehicles for operation as wildland fire engines. Governments that provide emergency services to areas with a population of 25,000 or less are eligible to apply and grant amounts will range from $10,000 to $200,000. A new search tool allows communities to determine their eligibility for this program.

Statements of interest are due March 21.

Additional Resources

Biochar in the Southwest: Using New Mexico Practices and Regulations as a Model
CJ Ames and Eva Stricker, PhD, Quivira Coalition and Kelpie Wilson, Wilson Biochar Associates
This workbook from the Quivira Coalition offers practices on New Mexico lands as a model for making and using biochar in a relatively hot, dry, and windy environment. It is both a primer on what biochar is and what makes it a useful tool in land management, as well as a guide on how to produce and distribute it on the land. This workbook is intended to accompany in-field or video training that will enable land stewards and technical service providers to safely produce biochar for use in their operations.
Read the free online version! Hard copies are available for purchase from the Quivira Coalition Store.


Forest Resource Index for Decisions in Adaptation (FRIDA): A library of climate adaptation support tools for forest management.

The Forest Resource Index for Decisions in Adaptation (FRIDA) is a library of climate adaptation support tools for forest stewardship in the Southwest.
FRIDA is an online library of decision-support tools and resources to help support climate change adaptation decision-making and forest stewardship in the Southwest. FRIDA allows managers and decision-makers to easily query based on their objectives and area(s) of interest. Users can filter resources by topic, region/state, resource platform, and vegetation type to efficiently find the most relevant region-specific tools and resources to best fit their needs.

Wildfire Wednesdays #128: Vulnerability in Wildfire Risk Rating

Happy Wednesday, FACNM Community!

Wildfire risk does not exist in a vacuum; many factors contribute to how vulnerable an area or a community is to a potential fire. Proximity to wilderness, ecosystem type, defensible space, building materials and styles, financial standing, digital connectivity, and more influence severity of risk. Today we will be exploring one aspect of this intersectional risk - social vulnerability - and how we can account for it in our community protection planning.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Take care,
Rachel

Learn more about the Social Vulnerability Index!

The Social Vulnerability Index

From water shortages to wildfire impacts, research and experience has shown that socially vulnerable groups across the United States are bearing high costs of environmental hardships which are expected to worsen with climate change, population growth, and changes in population centers and habits. Growing evidence indicates that these environmental hardships constitute an environmental injustice, as vulnerable groups are disproportionately exposed.

In the face of wildfires, all communities risk tremendous losses. However, some communities risk losing more of their assets, both tangible and cultural, when their homes or their properties burn. Many rural and under-served communities have no insurance to rebuild their homes; renters are displaced and have no means to recover their valuables; and elderly and disabled residents confront additional threats when responding to events and caring for themselves and their families. Catastrophic wildfire can result in the loss of livelihood for residents and communities as a whole, including loss of jobs, natural resource and tourism industries, and other economic opportunities in the community.

The social vulnerability index refers to the susceptibility of social groups to the adverse impacts of natural hazards. For wildfire, this index can be mapped by overlaying wildfire potential, wildland-urban interface designations, and census tract data. On average, places with high wildfire potential have lower social vulnerability, but nearly 10% of all housing in places with high wildfire potential also exhibit high social vulnerability.

Learn more about tools for evaluating social vulnerability!

Tools for Evaluating Vulnerability

Wildfire Risk to Communities

"Wildfire Risk to Communities" is a user-friendly website developed by the USDA Forest Service to aid communities in comprehending and decreasing their vulnerability to wildfires. This platform, established at the directive of Congress, offers interactive maps, charts, and resources to support informed decision-making. Utilizing the most up-to-date research insights, the website identifies and assesses wildfire vulnerability, equipping communities with the necessary tools to manage and mitigate these risks. The data used in the project is drawn from consistent sources like LANDFIRE for vegetation and fuels, the National Weather Service for weather information, and the U.S. Census Bureau for community data. Notably, wildfires and significant disturbances that happened after 2014 are not yet included in the data.

The website is primarily designed for community leaders such as elected officials, planners, and fire managers. It provides a broad perspective on risk across regions, states, and counties. While accessible for exploration online, the data can also be downloaded as GIS raster layers which enables more in-depth and personalized analysis. The website is intended to be used to compare risk among communities rather than within them and is not suitable for evaluating risk at the local, neighborhood, or individual home level. It also features a tool specifically intended for use with Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) applications.

Justice40 Initiative

Through Presidential Executive Order 14008, the Federal Government has set a goal to have 40% of overall benefits of certain Federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. The categories of investment that fall within the Justice40 Initiative are: climate change, clean energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, remediation and reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of critical clean water and wastewater infrastructure.

In July 2021, the White House issued formal Interim Implementation Guidance directing all Federal agencies to identify which of their programs are covered under the Justice40 Initiative and to begin implementing a set of reforms to those programs. In January 2023, the White House issued additional guidance to Federal agencies on how to use the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), a geospatial mapping tool that helps bring disadvantaged communities to the forefront of planning. Initiatives like J40 are designed, in part, to create more equitable distribution of wildfire risk reduction costs and benefits.

The CEJST is a designed to identify communities that are marginalized and overburdened by pollution and underinvestment. The CEJST features a user-friendly searchable map that identifies disadvantaged communities across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories, to the extent data are available for the U.S. territories.

Engagement in Community Wildfire Protection Plans

Since the advent of the National Fire Plan in 2000, numerous policies and programs, including the Healthy Forests Restoration Act and Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), have been implemented for communities across the nation to work collaboratively with public agencies to identify and reduce wildfire risk. Beginning in 2005, collaborators within New Mexico determined the need to incorporate provisions within these CWPPs to account for and uplift socially vulnerable - rural, low-income, and under-served - communities. Papers such as Measuring Community Capacity for Protection from Wildfire recognized that some of these communities lack the human capital (staff or volunteers) and social capacity (including financial resources) to successfully develop and implement CWPPs on their own.

Technical assistance and direct education and outreach can make a great difference in assisting these communities identify high risk areas and recommend strategies for fire protection. A 2008 document, Engaging Socially Vulnerable Populations in Community Wildfire Protection Plans, provides tools to low-income and under-served communities for protection from wildfire:

  • Ensure that low capacity communities are incorporated within Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) goals.

  • Conduct risk assessments that include social as well as biophysical dimensions of risk.

  • Identify vulnerable populations and develop strategies to meet their needs within a CWPP.

  • Monitor and evaluate the impact of CWPPs.

Topics covered include CWPP strategies for low capacity communities, Fostering collaboration, Assessing community capacity in a wildfire risk assessment, and Vulnerable populations.

Following the publication of this 2008 guidance, the NM Forestry Division incorporated the recommendation that CWPPs “recognize the needs of especially vulnerable populations such as the elderly, people with disabilities, and disadvantaged populations” in their 2015 and 2021 CWPP Guidelines. This practice is now standard for the creation and updating of Community Wildfire Protection Plans across the state.

Digital vulnerability during disasters

The Disaster Risk Communication and Digital Vulnerability Among Subsidized Housing Residents report details how some groups may lack the information they need to prepare for and respond to disasters because they are unable to receive digital risk communication due to internet access barriers or lower levels of digital literacy skills. It suggests that practitioners should be more cautious when using digital tools to disseminate information, as many individuals in subsidized housing may have difficulty accessing digital information. The report also provides recommendations to ensure the effectiveness of risk communication in vulnerable communities such as digital literacy training and targeted communication campaigns. Read the report in full and peruse the research brief.

Learn more about Resources and Opportunities!

Resources and Opportunities

Webinars

February 20 at 12pm: Post-Wildfire Recovery Through the Principles of Engineering With Nature
In this one-hour webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and Joint Fire Science Program, Chris Haring with the Army Corps of Engineers will share lessons learned from post-fire erosion control and ecosystem recovery following the Las Conchas fire in Santa Clara Canyon. Chris’ experience centers around Engineering With Nature-Natural and Nature-Based Features (EWN-NNBF), using post-fire debris and existing materials to stem erosion and degredation of the canyon and its drainages.

2024-2025 Wildfire Risk Reduction Grant Program

New Mexico Counties is pleased to announce the 2024-2025 Wildfire Risk Reduction Program. This grant program assists communities throughout New Mexico to reduce the risk posed by wildland fire on non-federal lands. Funding for this program is provided by the National Fire Plan through the Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management for communities in the wildland-urban interface and is intended to directly benefit communities that may be impacted by wildland fire initiating from or spreading to BLM public land.   

Funding categories include:

Click to view the Wildfire Risk Reduction Program application checklist

  • CWPP updates up to $25,000/project

  • Education and outreach activities up to $20,000/project

  • Hazardous fuels reduction projects up to $100,000/project

Project proposals require a minimum 10% in-kind cost share and must be completed within the 12-month award timeline of July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025. Applications are due to the local BLM field office for signature(s) by Friday, March 1, 2024, and completed application(s) with all signatures are due to NMC by 5:00 p.m. Friday, April 5, 2024.

Please contact Aelysea Webb at (505) 395- 3403 or awebb@nmcounties.org for more information.

Wildfire Wednesdays #127: Homeowner's Insurance & Escalating Wildfire Risks

Hello FACNMers,

In the face of escalating wildfire risks in the Western U.S., homeowner's insurance stands as an important line of defense against climate change-induced calamities. The surge in unprecedented wildfires in recent times has prompted a reassessment of the risks associated with insuring homes in fire-prone regions by homeowners' insurance companies. Numerous conventional carriers now decline to provide insurance coverage for properties in high-risk areas, and some have stopped renewing existing policies. The reluctance of insurers stems from concerns about potential liabilities, exacerbated by the lengthening periods of drought and lessening wet seasons. This flight of insurance companies has happened perhaps first and worst in the state of California, and the struggle there can give context to what the rest of the west may face. Read on for more details.

In this post:

  • Background: California’s Insurance Challenges & the Impact Beyond CA

  • How Do Insurance Companies Determine Coverage?

  • Exploring Possible Solutions

  • Upcoming Opportunities

Happy Reading!

Best,

Dayl

Background

California’s Insurance Challenges

*Information sourced from this NY Times article and this KQED article.

Climate disasters, especially intensifying wildfires, have posed a significant threat to California, impacting the insurance industry and the millions of residents who rely on it. Seven major insurance companies, including Allstate, State Farm, Farmers Insurance, and AIG, have either left California or scaled back their operations in response to the escalating risks. The state's current business model is under threat, necessitating a comprehensive regulatory overhaul.

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara faced increased pressure to act as legislative efforts faltered. An executive order from Gov. Gavin Newsom urged swift action to strengthen the property market, prompting Lara to announce significant regulatory changes by the end of the next year. The proposed changes aim to enhance market stability, but they also raise concerns about potential premium increases.

Lara's proposed changes include agreements with insurance companies to offer coverage to at least 85% of homeowners in high wildfire-risk areas. This shift aims to transition homeowners from the state's insurer of last resort, the FAIR plan, back to the regular market. Additionally, allowing companies to use forward-looking climate catastrophe models and passing on California-related reinsurance costs are crucial components of the regulatory overhaul.

While the announced changes aim to address the challenges faced by the insurance industry, reactions have been mixed. Some see it as a necessary compromise to ensure both consumer and insurer viability, while others criticize it as a victory for the insurance industry. The potential for higher premiums has raised concerns, but the changing landscape suggests that the era of cheap insurance may be over, requiring homeowners to adapt to a new normal.

The Impact Beyond California

The challenges faced by California's insurance market are reflective of broader trends in the Western U.S. and beyond. Climate-driven disasters are accelerating price hikes, coverage withdrawals, and market instability, posing a global systemic risk. The potential collapse of the insurance market could have far-reaching consequences on the economy, affecting the real estate industry, mortgages, and overall economic stability.

How Do Insurance Companies Determine Coverage?

*Information courtesy of Ashley Dalton, an Insurance Agent with offices in Ruidoso and Alamogordo, NM. View her PowerPoint presentation slides on the topic here.

30-50% of underwriting decisions are based on the two following programs:

For typical structure loss due to fires

Public Protection Class ISO (1971)

• 50% comes from the quality of your local fire department, including staffing levels, training and proximity of the firehouse.

• 40% comes from availability of water supply, including the prevalence of fire hydrants and how much water is available to put out fires.

• 10% comes from the quality of the area’s emergency communications systems (911).

• An extra 5.5% can come from community outreach, including fire prevention and safety courses.

For predicting risks specific to wildland fires in rural areas

ISO Fireline (2004)

• Fuel — Grass, trees, or dense brush feed a wildfire.

• Slope — Steeper slopes can increase the speed and intensity of wildfire.

• Access — Limited access and dead-end roads can impede firefighting equipment.

• Scores range from negligible (0) to low (1), moderate (2–3),high (4–12), and extreme (13–30)

For the remaining 50-70%, it depends on the following: Construction type (fire-resistive, non-combustible, ordinary, heavy timber, wood-framed), roof type, renovations, condition, size, and age.

Exploring Possible Solutions

*Information and ideas are sourced from an interview with Nancy Watkins, a specialist in wildfire risk assessment and climate resilience. Listen to/watch the podcast episode here, and read her related research paper here.

The Need for Comprehensive Data

An important point in this conversation is the need for comprehensive data to thoroughly understand wildfire risk, and this is one of the main disconnects in the world of wildfire insurance. There are major challenges in quantifying risk, especially concerning community-level mitigation efforts, and the data needed to understand the current and future risk of wildfire is evolving rapidly. And while individuals may believe that mitigation efforts should guarantee insurance coverage, certain factors may still deter insurance companies.

The dynamic nature of mitigation work, changing annually, poses difficulties for insurers who cannot conduct on-site inspections regularly. Additionally, satellite imagery may not capture crucial zones near homes. One solution to these difficulties, as suggested by Nancy Watkins, would be to establish a data commons, providing parcel-level inspection data that is aggregated to enhance the quantification of wildfire risk. These data could provide invaluable insights for insurance companies, fire management professionals, scientists, and modelers, offering a more accurate depiction of wildfire risk. It can also lead to insights about where fire mitigation work can provide the most value relative to where a fire may come into a community, such as focusing on properties on the edge of the wildland-urban interface rather than in the middle of a residential development.

Community-Wide Mitigation and Market Incentives

So, what is going to motivate your neighbors to want to be wildfire prepared? Changes to the insurance industry may do the trick, in the form of communities getting official risk designations from insurance companies. This would involve having categories of community risk, just like there are currently categories of community hazard. These risk categories would be based upon what is done near communities to slow fire down, what fire response resources exist in communities, and how people have discouraged the fire from spreading from house to house.

An example of this process might look as follows: if 75% percent of a community has completed measurable mitigation actions, then the risk level as a community would decrease. This system would provide a way to differentiate communities and make them more attractive to insurance companies. These community-level distinctions could also serve to bring community members together and increase participation in programs such as Firewise.

Conclusion

The evolving landscape of homeowner's insurance in the Western U.S. amid escalating wildfire risks signifies a critical juncture where challenges and potential solutions intersect. The significant impact on California's insurance market, marked by the departure of major carriers and regulatory efforts, exemplifies the broader trends affecting the region and beyond. As climate-driven disasters continue to drive price hikes, coverage withdrawals, and market instability, the repercussions extend to the economy, impacting real estate, mortgages, and overall stability. The delicate balance between consumer protection and insurer viability underscores the need for continued dialogue and collaboration to navigate the evolving challenges posed by escalating wildfire risks in the Western U.S.

Upcoming Opportunities


Funding Opportunity

Spring 2024 Fire Adapted Communities grant funding: application portal opening soon!

Are you interested in promoting and developing your community’s fire adapted practices? Motivated to convene community events but need a little help? Consider applying for seed funding this Spring!

FACNM is offering grants of up to $2,000 to Leaders and Members seeking financial assistance to:

  • convene wildfire preparedness events,

  • enable on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • develop grant proposals to ensure the financial longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

Job Opportunity

The Forest Stewards Guild is hiring a Southwest Ecological Monitoring Technician for the 2024 season! Applications are due February 9th. Please include a resume, cover letter, and three references sent to collin@forestguild.org.

Read the full position description here.

Upcoming Events

FACNM January Connection Call for Network Members and Leaders

Jan 29, 2024 1:00pm Mountain Time

Network members and leaders, please join us for our January FACNM connection call! We will be discussing network building successes, challenges, and strategies, and experiences with active outreach in our communities.

FAC Net Vulnerability Webinar

Jan 29, 2024 12:00pm Mountain Time

This webinar will provide an overview and quick "how-to" on tools for gathering and leveraging vulnerability data, which can be used to apply for federal grants that benefit under-resourced communities. Topics will include the Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT), Grant Equity Threshold Tool (GETT), and the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST).

Webinar: Overview of Prescribed Fire Liability in State Law

Feb 1, 2024 11:30am Mountain Time

Hosted By: The Nature Conservancy and the Fire Learning Network

In this 90-minute webinar, Sara Clark will provide an overview of prescribed fire liability in state law, including definitions of liability and how state laws defining liability interact with certified burn manager programs, tribal sovereignty and cultural burning, and prescribed fire insurance.

Thinking and Working in Projects: A Free ArcGIS Pro training workshop

February 15 · 12:30pm – 4:30pm MST

February 16 · 12:30pm – 4:30pm MST

Objectives of this course: understanding project design and functionality, creating a project from a template, sharing maps, layouts and content between projects, collaborating and integration with AGOL, Portal, streaming services. 

To take part in this training you’ll need an active or trial license to ArcGIS Pro 3.X and will need to download the software before taking the course. You can download a 21-day trial here.

This free workshop is limited to 16 participants and is sponsored by the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute. Registering for the course will reserve your spot on both afternoons.

Spring 2024 Microgrant Funding Opportunity

Spring 2024 Fire Adapted Communities grant funding: application portal opening soon!

Calling all FACNM Members and Leaders

Are you interested in promoting and developing your community’s fire adapted practices? Motivated to convene community events but need a little help? Consider applying for seed funding this Spring!

FACNM is offering grants of up to $2,000 to Leaders and Members seeking financial assistance to:

  • convene wildfire preparedness events,

  • enable on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • develop grant proposals to ensure the financial longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

Photo from a green waste disposal event for the community of La Barbaria, made possible by Round 1 microgrant funding from FACNM.

Proposals demonstrating community benefit or FAC capacity building are considered on a semi-annual basis; read about project successes funded by Spring 2023 - Round 1 microgrants. Grantees will be reimbursed for applicable expenses up to their awarded grant amount.

Grant reporting requirements include narrative (~500 words) and photo documentation of the event/work, documentation of community participation (if applicable), and possible creation of a FACNM blog post.

2024 Round 1 proposals will open on January 10 and are due by 11:59pm Mountain Time on February 29, 2024. Grantees will have twelve months from the time of award to utilize the funds.

Not eligible? Become a FACNM Leader or Member today!

FACNM Leader Judy Pierson leads a defensible space demonstration event for her community in central NM, made possible by a microgrant from FACNM.

If you would like to apply for a FACNM microgrant but are not sure if you are eligible, read through our FACNM Membership Structure guide to determine where you fit in the network. To become a FACNM leader and receive first priority for funding opportunities, visit our Leaders webpage and apply today.

Wildfire Wednesdays #126: Resolving to Prepare for Wildfire in the New Year

Happy Wednesday, FACNM Community!

We hope you all are having a lovely holiday season. As our corner of the world tilts into winter, we are using this chilly contemplative time to get back to the basics - of wildfire preparedness. Join us in using this winter to work on home hardening and defensible space, plan a spring community preparedness event, and review best practices for the wildfire season to come.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Happy New Year,
Rachel

Learn more about Living with Fire!

Living with Wildfire

A guide for educators and homeowners

Living with Fire (LWF), a Guide for New Mexico Homeowners, provides recommendations and resources to homeowners, educators, community groups, and firefighting professionals to prepare for wildfire and reduce wildfire threats to homes and communities. LWF is a collaborative effort among federal, state, local firefighting agencies, and resource management agencies in New Mexico and across the nation. The LWF program is managed by the University of Nevada Reno, Extension, an EEO/AA institution.

In this Living With Fire Guide, you will find proven steps that communities can take to help protect family and property during wildfire. Responsibility and preparation is where it starts. Click on the image to learn more about community protection, access to your residence, defensible space, the built environment, and evacuation.

Learn more about Ready, Set, Go!

Ready, Set, Go!

Resources for evacuation readiness and safety

New Mexico’s Ready, Set, Go! Guide is designed to assist with planning and preparation for a wildfire emergency. The program helps residents be Ready with preparedness understanding, be Set with situational awareness when fire threatens, and to Go, acting early when a wildfire starts.

This is a great general resource to help you, your friends, family, and neighbors start to make progress toward wildfire preparedness. When doing work around your house or planning for wildfire, talk to those in your community about what you are doing and why.

To get started on the Ready, Set, Go! Guidebook, click here.

Record keeping for fire safety

Keeping important documents with you when evacuating, or storing them digitally in cloud based storage can help support you in the wildfire recovery process.

One often-overlooked aspect of fire preparedness is safekeeping important records, paperwork, photos, and other documents. Visit FACNM’s blog on preparing for spring ignitions to learn more about 10 key items that you should be sure to keep safe, if applicable, and how to store them ahead of time.

Resolve to take these steps for wildfire readiness

The beginning of a new year, when the risk of wildfire is relatively low, is a good time to start thinking about what you can do now to be ready for fire season later.
Our recommendations for your New Year’s resolutions:

  • Develop an emergency plan: choose a safe place to meet, learn evacuation routes, and establish an out-of-town contact. 

  • Take a current photo of you and your pet(s) together in case you get separated during a disaster. 

  • Get to know your neighbors and invite them to be a part of your emergency plan. 

  • Snap photos of important documents and save them in a secure place or online. 

  • Set up group text lists so you can communicate with friends and family during emergencies. 

  • Take a class in CPR and first aid. 

  • Keep and update emergency supplies, including cash. 

  • Have back-up power sources available to charge devices in case of a power outage. 

  • Check your insurance for coverage on disasters like wildfire and floods. Snap pictures of your property for insurance purposes. 

  • Sign up for emergency alerts and warnings. Download the FEMA app or check with your city or county government to see if they have an alert and notification system in place.  

Learn more about Home Improvements for Wildfire!

Home Improvements

Hardening for homeowners and renters

Even small actions can have a big impact on fire outcomes for your home, family and community. Whether you have 10 minutes or 10 hours to dedicate to wildfire preparedness, use that time increase your safety, strengthen community resilience and improve fire outcomes. Not sure where to start? Review the list of quick fire preparedness project ideas from the national Fire Adapted Communities learning network.

Home Hardening

Fire hardened does not mean fireproof; it means your home is prepared for wildfire and ember storms. Home hardening addresses the most vulnerable components of your house with building materials and installation techniques that increase resistance to heat, flames, and embers that accompany most wildfires.

Priorities text courtesy of Santa Clara County FireSafe Council

Yard Preparation and Considerations

An extension of defensible space, the tips and tasks are presented below can be done to prepare your yard and property for wildfire season now and throughout the year.

Property areas and considerations include: borders and hedges, dry vegetative debris, slash chipping, pests and disease, attics and crawl space vents, vegetation spacing, mulch, considerations for birds, holiday tree safety, and more.

Image courtesy of the ‘Tips and Tricks for the Yard’ webpage from SCC FireSafe Council. Visit the website for additional resources related to each yard area.

Inside and Outside the Home

Property protection booklet cover image courtesy of FEMA.

“While you can’t prevent all wildfires from happening, there are some ways to secure your property to minimize damage and keep your home and your future safe.”

Click the image or download the PDF from FEMA to learn simple tricks for how to fortify your space this winter, inside and outside of the home.

Additional resources

Throughout the cold season, set aside some time to click through and visit these resources. An excerpt of topics includes:

Defensible Space

Winter is often the best time to take steps to defend against fire, such as thinning out dense patches of trees, removing flammable brush and weeds, and pruning the limbs of mature trees to reduce contiguous fuels. Thinning and pruning during the cold winter months can also help reduce pest and disease infection in your trees and shrubs.

Maintenance tasks such as clearing flammable debris from gutters and around the home, making sure there are no flammable materials like firewood or patio furniture near your structures, and keeping grass and weeds mowed to less than 4 inches are all things you can do in these winter months and as part of spring cleaning to keep your home protected.

Like other parts of your home, defensible space requires upkeep and conscious decision-making about your space, such as the choice to plant native grasses.

Checklist adapted from NMSU and Firewise® on defensible space actions that can be taken annually

New Mexico State University ACES college, Firewise®, and Western Fire Chiefs Association (WFCA) are just a few of the entities which offer information and checklists to guide your creation of defensible zones and upkeep of defensible space.

“Defensible space is the buffer you create between a building… and the grass, trees, shrubs, or any wildland area that surrounds it. This space is needed to slow or stop the spread of wildfire and it helps protect your home from catching fire—either from embers, direct flame contact or radiant heat. Proper defensible space also provides firefighters a safe area to work in, to defend your home.”

- (CAL FIRE, Ready for Wildfire)

Learn more about Planning Preparedness Events!

Planning a Preparedness Event

How to bring your community together to learn and share

Plan your Project

The idea behind Wildfire Community Preparedness is to bring people together to take action to reduce wildfire hazards in their neighborhood or area. 2023’s Preparedness Day toolkit provided a list of project ideas, safety tips, and more to help guide your community event.

Ideas for Action

Click here to download the action guide!

The National Community Wildfire Preparedness “menu” describes different project ideas that FAC members have organized in tandem with the National Fire Protection Association’s National Community Wildfire Preparedness Day. In addition to project overviews, the menu provides information about costs, equipment, planning needs, etc.

When starting or revamping a chipping program, there are several things to consider, including  assessing need, funding, staffing, outreach and marketing, chipper selection, access and functional needs, chip dispersal and use, and program improvement year over year. FAC Net offers a toolkit for those wondering where to start.

Remember that there are many people across the country who are working toward the same goal as you - to bring their communities together for wildfire preparedness. Back in 2018, one FAC Net member wrote about their experience and applicable lessons learned with Seeking and Finding Community Capacity for Wildfire Resilience.

Learn more about Other Resources!

Other Resources

Educational recordings

FACNM recently launched a YouTube webpage which will house recordings of past webinars and other important informational videos related to the New Mexico Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. Subscribe and share to keep apprised of new recordings when they are released!

Readiness Apps

The Fire Networks blog post “Five Useful Apps for Wildfire Readiness” highlights apps and websites that give access to air quality information, real-time wildfire alerts, a wildfire tracker, and a natural hazard risk assessment tool.

Wildfire Wednesdays #125: Prescribed Burn Associations

Happy December, FACNM Community!

With winter upon us, the season for pile burning, a type of prescribed burning, has begun. Prescribed burning (also called controlled burning or controlled fire) is an incredibly important tool used across the country to promote healthier forests and reduce the risks of wildfire. It also features prominently as a treatment in many landscape-scale projects. While you may think of prescribed burns as something done only by federal employees wearing yellow nomex shirts and hardhats, this tool is actually utilized a diverse array of organizations and individuals concerned with the health of their surrounding ecosystems. Today we will discuss Prescribed Burn Associations, an integral part of putting this tool into the hands of landowners and communities.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

Best,
Dayl

Learn more about Prescribed Burn Associations!

What is a Prescribed Burn Association?

This Prescribed Burn Association Interactive Map from the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange shows active PBAs across the U.S.

A Prescribed Burn Association (PBA) is a group of landowners and other interested people from a specific geographic area that form a partnership to help one another conduct prescribed burns. The first PBAs, also referred to as prescribed burn cooperatives, were formed in Nebraska around 1995, Texas in 1997, and Oklahoma in 2001 to overcome the constraints limiting the use of prescribed fire on rangelands.

These associations are community-built efforts in which members combine their knowledge, equipment, and other resources to provide learning opportunities and reduce barriers with the end goal of implementing more prescribed burns as private landowners. Common barriers include personal and professional liability associated with fire use, lack of training, lack of equipment, and lack of resources. It can be very difficult for private landowners to gain the hands-on training needed to safely and effectively use prescribed fire, and PBAs can provide that training while building a network of engaged landowners who can connect on an array of land management concerns.

In the broader context of land management, PBAs can also help fill the gaps in capacity that result from overburdened agencies with a backlog of millions of acres to burn. Because PBAs can operate with much less overhead and formality than agency-implemented burns, they are more agile and flexible in their pathways to implementing prescribed burns in their communities.

As a coalition of neighbors, friends, and locals, PBAs can build trust, improve attitudes toward fire, and increase the social acceptability of using prescribed fire as a management tool. In south-central North Carolina, the Sandhills PBA offers one example of how quickly attitudes can change:

As part of the initial community gathering rolling out the Sandhills PBA, attendees were surveyed before and after the meeting. Beforehand, 34% of the attendees planned to join the PBA and 16% said they would not join. After the meeting, 56% of attendees had decided to join and 0% remained opposed! Read more about this success story here.

For more information about prescribed burn associations, this FAC Learning network webinar recording discusses PBAs and is part of a webinar series about different wildfire resilience programs around the country. Learn about Fire Councils and Training Exchange Programs as part of the series!

Learn more about the NM Prescribed Fire Council!

NM Prescribed Fire Council

New Mexico has what is called a Prescribed Fire Council (PFC). These councils are generally statewide organizations that often work in tandem and share many common goals with localized prescribed burn associations. PFCs allow private landowners, fire practitioners, agencies, non-governmental organizations, policymakers, regulators, and others to exchange information related to prescribed fire and promote public understanding of the importance and benefits of fire use.

A map showing which states have Prescribed Fire Councils, from the Coalition of Prescribed Fire Councils, Inc.

PFCs date back to 1975, when the first council in the US was created in Florida in response to rapid development in Miami. Shortly thereafter, the North Florida Prescribed Fire Council was created in 1989 and more explicitly focused on prescribed fire. Neighboring states observed the success of Florida’s programs and began adopting the council model to incorporate federal, state, and private interests. Eventually, prescribed fire councils started to spread beyond the Southeast and across the country. Today, most states have established councils.

For those who want to get involved in New Mexico, membership in the New Mexico Prescribed Fire Council is open to anyone who has a passion for utilizing beneficial fire as a land management tool. Visit the website to become a member or to learn more about the resources provided by the council.

For more information about prescribed fire councils, view this FAC Learning Network webinar recording for a brief overview!

Learn more about the training course!

NM State Forestry’s Prescribed Fire Training Course

New Mexico EMNRD Forestry Division (‘State Forestry’) launched a free publicly available prescribed burning curriculum in autumn 2023. This training, required by the passage of the 2021 Prescribed Burning Act, is accessed through their website. Both primary training and certification waivers are offered through their Canvas portal, where interested individuals can create a free account using the code provided on the Forestry Division - Prescribed Burning webpage. You can choose to sign up for pile burning or broadcast burning courses and progress through the interactive modules which cover topics such as safety, public relations, fire behavior, techniques, etc. Learn more about the Act, and the Curriculum available to landowners and individuals interested in learning how to conduct prescribed burns in a safe manner, by attending the FACNM webinar on Supporting Prescribed Fire in New Mexico on 12/7/23 from 2-3pm.

The dashboard for the learning portal.

Learn more about upcoming events and announcements!

Upcoming Webinars & Prescribed Fire in the News

Webinars

Webinar: Supporting Prescribed Fire in New Mexico
Thursday, December 7th

Join FACNM as we discuss New Mexico's new certified burn program and ways to responsibly and safely increase implementation of prescribed fire across jurisdictions and land boundaries in the state! This presentation is open to practitioners, leaders, and members of the public.

Webinar: Developing Community Wildfire Protection Plans in Your Community
14 December, 2023 / 10 January, 2024 at 12:00pm

Learn what a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is, including: why your community may need one, what the process involves, what the components are, what resources you need to complete one, how to use CWPPs to support funding for implementation, and more! Join the webinar to hear about how CWPPs are increasingly being used to direct various funding opportunities, including Community Wildfire Defense Grants (CWDG). This program will also be offered en español.

In the News

NM Fire Info - Pile Burning Projects Planned Across Carson National Forest
With the arrival of winter weather, Carson National Forest fire crews are preparing to continue prescribed fire activities, this time in the form of pile burning. Thinning and prescribed fire are two of the most important tools of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy to promote healthier forests and reduce the risks of wildfire. Planned pile burning in the Carson National Forest this winter will contribute to major landscape projects across the forest. National Forests across the state, including the Carson, have incorporated the findings and recommendations of the summer 2022 prescribed burning pause and resulting National Prescribed Fire Program Review to ensure that prescribed fires follow more rigorous standards, have more impactful checks and balances, and prioritize the safety of firefighters and communities.

Thinning and prescribed fire are two of the most important tools of the Wildfire Crisis Strategy to promote healthier forests and reduce the risks of wildfire. Planned pile burning in the Carson National Forest this winter will contribute to major landscape projects across the forest.  

NPR All Things Considered Radio Story - This Year Saw More Prescribed Fire Than Ever Before
Listen to this recent story from a prescribed burn in El Rito, which paints the picture of a broadcast burn and much of what it entails. It also provides the unique historical and social context of prescribed fire in northern New Mexico—a teeter-totter where on one side we have communities understandably opposed to prescribed fire given the tragic events of last year, and on the other side the dire need for fuels reduction to avoid catastrophic wildfires in the future. The two are inextricably linked, and fire practitioners must find the balance.

HEPA Filter Loan Programs

Portable HEPA air filters provide clean and healthy breathable air to individuals and households by filtering out very small and harmful particles, such as those carried in wildfire smoke, allergens, and industrial smog. FACNM offers a HEPA filter loan program, with several participating areas across north and central New Mexico. These are prioritized for loan to smoke-sensitive individuals during periods of smoke impacts and are shared in coordination with network partners, such as the Carson National Forest. A November 24 article from NPR linked in the section above detailed the importance of a HEPA filter loan program in building public trust, saying “today [Angie Krall, El Rito District Ranger, will] stop by a community library and lend an air filter to someone with asthma.”

Smoke from wildfires and prescribed fires is a serious concern as it can cause or exacerbate health conditions for some people living in fire-adapted communities. The Carson National Forest - El Rito Ranger District is part of this program, and folks in that area can reserve filters directly with them by calling (575) 581-4554.

Wildfire Wednesdays #124: The Language of Wildfire

Happy Wednesday, FACNM family.

Language has always fascinated me, especially regional dialects - these variations of the same language that develop over time and differ, sometimes significantly, because they are built by the unique environment, activities, and influence on any one area. Native speakers of the same language may yet encounter a language barrier if they grew up learning different dialects!

The language of wildfire is not so different. Individuals who have been steeped in this terminology are well versed to understand and speak it easily, while ‘fire speak’ can sound pretty foreign and unintelligible to folks who haven’t encountered it before. Today’s Wildfire Wednesday seeks to simplify and explain this language and the way we use it so that we all have access to the same common lexicon, knowing that effective communications build support for sound wildfire policies.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

  • Basic fire terminology

  • Techniques for fire communication

  • Resources and opportunities

Be well and stay warm,
Rachel

Basic Terminology

Establishing a common vocabulary

Wildfire is our common denominator - regardless of age, background, place, or culture, we all are impacted by it in the Southwest (and increasingly across the country). We may be directly impacted as a fire burns close to our town or indirectly via smoke, the impacts on our loved ones living elsewhere, or the anxiety caused when we hear about it on the news. To understand one another when we talk about fire, from the names we give it (wildfire, managed fire, prescribed fire) to the way we interact with it (suppression, boxing it in, preparing for fire), we must build a shared vocabulary and boil down the technical jargon to find common ground through plain English.

Tools for learning

The first video below provides a basic introduction to terms you may hear in fire management, including ignition source, containment, wildfire versus interface fire, size explanation, control, fire escapes, holding, hot spots, evacuation notices, and more. This video was produced in Vancouver, B.C., so it is worth noting that in the U.S. fires are generally measured in acres; 1 hectare is equivalent to approximately 2.5 acres.

The second video provides a quick introduction to terminology you may hear during an explanation of active wildfire (such as a morning fire briefing), including how to describe behavior and parts of the fire. This includes terms like flanks, fingers, pockets, islands, creeping, running, spotting, fire whirl, crowning, and more. Some of these terms will be used during other types of fire such as controlled burning.

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group also provides an online Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology and the (easier to use) searchable PDF which comprehensively list phrases and acronyms used in federal wildfire management. While this tool is helpful for understanding language used by federal fire practitioners and collaborators, it does not necessarily allow for the two-way construction of shared language with members of the public.

Moving beyond specific words and technical terms for wildland fire, let’s dive into how we talk about fire more broadly.

Techniques for Fire Communication

Building Support for Sound Wildfire Policies through Communication

Think back to a day that you were put in a bad mood because of something someone said to you - it may not have been what they said, but how they said it or the specific words they used that nagged at you. The way that we share and receive information matters, especially about something as emotionally charged as wildfire (and associated land management and community preparedness practices). This section provides some suggestions from the Wildfire Resilience Roadmap about being mindful of our fire language.

 

Summary: Across the country, a majority of Americans believe that forest health as worsening, and concern about wildfires has been steadily growing even among those not directly impacted. They overwhelmingly support a framework to reduce severe fire risk through improved forest management and the use of intentional fire – support that cuts across geography, party, gender, age, race and ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Research shows that people would rather invest now to reduce severe fire risk than later to address the aftermath of fires, including investments in year-round, trained teams to reduce the risk of severe wildfires. At the same time, innate and growing skepticism about government makes it challenging but important to document these policies’ proven track record and to highlight provisions requiring accountability and transparency in carrying out risk reduction strategies.

 

Communication Recommendations

These recommendations are taken from Appendix B of the Wildfire Resilience Roadmap and are based on 2022 general public opinion research. See the excerpted PDF here.

Illustration of two individuals talking with thought bubbles showing that they are both thinking the same thing

Image adapted from Patrick Buggy’s explanation of effective communication

  • Build on growing concern that fires are more severe and more frequent: messaging does not need to persuade voters that a problem exists – rather, it needs to funnel their existing concern into support for action.

  • Do not rely on concern about wildfire smoke to leverage action: while poor air quality tends to be a concern when and where problems with wildfire smoke are occurring, as the winds shift and fires die down, intensity of concern does as well. Instead, focus on fires themselves.

  • Do not count on using climate change as a rationale for action: climate change ranks in the middle-tier of a list of factors that the general public believes is contributing to increasingly frequent and severe wildfires. Deep ideological polarization continues to play a substantial role in perceptions of climate change.

  • Focus on impacts of climate change, most notably the contribution of droughts to the greater frequency and severity of fires: even without explicitly naming climate change as the cause, clearly describe its visible, tangible and current impacts on forests and pivoting to how to help them.

  • Acknowledge the important ecological role of fire: highlighting the benefits of normal, healthy fire cycles can be helpful.

  • Stress the need for improved forest management to prepare for fire: there is bipartisan agreement that the current approach to forest management isn’t working and that the overall condition of America’s forests has worsened over the last few years.

  • Do not ignore the need for more careful public behavior in and around fire-prone forests: many members of the public believe that a large share of wildland fires is started by humans, whether through a discarded cigarette or a campfire left unattended. Have open communication about fire exclusion versus fire suppression.

Table showing different groups of people and their perceived level of responsibility for wildfire risk management

Respondents of the research survey voted on who they felt should bear the burden of responsibility for reducing the risk of severe wildfire.

  • Focus on the role of partnerships in acting to reduce fire risk: every level of government, timber companies, residents of fire-prone areas, conservation organizations, and insurance companies bear responsibility for reducing the risk of severe wildfire.

  • Use the term “controlled burn”: while it may be considered less scientifically accurate, the general public prefers and better understands the term “controlled burn” in comparison to “prescribed fire.”

  • Focus on the principle of preparation: we intuitively understand and value saving money and lives by stopping unnecessary fires from happening and ensuring that ones that do occur are manageable and limited in their negative impacts. Contrasting the high financial and emotional cost of in the aftermath of a wildfire with the relatively low cost of intervention before the fact is highly persuasive. “When it comes to reducing wildfire risk, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

  • Highlight the creation and support of a year-round workforce: while wildfires are seasonal, land management is not, necessarily. It makes sense to invest more evenly throughout the year, keeping workers stably-employed, fairly-paid, and connected to the land, than to hurriedly try to assemble a competent workforce as fires occur.

Woman in yellow nomex stands holding an ax and looking away from the camera, back toward some low-burning flames in a smoky pine forest.

  • Call out the need to protect and support first responders whose lives are at risk in addressing wildfires: build support for investments in wildfire risk reduction by reminding people that reducing the intensity and severity of wildfires makes a tough job less dangerous and more manageable.

  • Do not use language focused generally on equity in distributing funds, but instead explain the context: given careful wording, members of the public consider communities with high risk and few resources as a high priority for funding.

  • Do not focus on investing in protection of timber supplies or recreational areas: these are things that could be restored or recovered more easily if need be than water supply, habitat, or human communities.

  • Do not rely on the word “resilience” alone: resilience is seen as a quality displayed in recovery after a disaster has struck, rather than one that reflects an ability to avoid its worst harms. Preparation, safety and health are better since they leave open the possibility that a community could avoid the worst impacts of a disaster – rather than conceding that they will occur. Focus on concrete and desirable outcomes, such as “safe and healthy forests” or “fire-prepared communities.”

Rocky jutting grey mountain crags slope steeply down to a deep blue choppy lake ringed by green conifer trees

Lake Katherine, just south of Santa Fe Baldy, in the Pecos Wilderness east of Santa Fe.

  • Do not assume that people understand how fire threatens water supplies - rather, convey the reality and seriousness of the risks: once the process by which fires lead to contamination of survey water is briefly explained, people find it compelling.

  • Stress provisions for public disclosure, audits, and fiscal accountability in any public spending proposal: in general, we show high degrees of skepticism about “government” writ large. In any discussion of significant federal investment in wildfire risk reduction, that skepticism (and related fears of waste) emerges as the biggest obstacle to winning public support.

  • Use state and federal agencies with land management responsibility as messengers: people understand federal land managers as being guided by the mission of protecting the health of forests for current and future generations and wildlife, and largely trust information from these groups as being free of a profit motive or ideological agenda.

  • Give wildland firefighters, park rangers, wildlife biologists and Tribal leaders prominent roles as messengers: we trust messengers who we see as neutral experts on fire issues, such as park rangers, wildlife biologists, and tribal leaders. We also value those with firsthand experience, such as people who have lost their homes to wildfires.

Resources and Opportunities

Webinars

7 December, 2023 at 2:00pm: Supporting Prescribed Fire in New Mexico

Join FACNM as we discuss New Mexico's new certified burn program and ways to responsibly and safely increase implementation of prescribed fire across jurisdictions and land boundaries in the state! This presentation is open to practitioners, leaders, and members of the public. Read more about the new certification program here.

For those interested in getting involved now, the self-paced online training for the New Mexico Certified Burn Manager Program is available, with options for pile burn or broadcast burn certification!

29 November / 14 December, 2023 / 10 January, 2024 at 12:00pm: Developing Community Wildfire Protection Plans in Your Community

Flyer excerpt for the CWPP webinar

Learn what a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is and why your community may need one, what the process involves and what the components are, what resources you need to complete a CWPP, how to use CWPPs to support funding for implementation and more! Join the webinar to hear about how CWPPs are increasingly being used to direct various funding opportunities, including Community Wildfire Defense Grants (CWDG). This program will also be offered en español.

Online Portals

Landing page for the new Fire Networks website. White text over a dark picture of flames burning low through a smokey conifer forest.

Landing page for the new Fire Networks website

One site to access fire resources, news and events, and contacts: the Fire Learning Network (FLN), Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network (FAC Net), Indigenous Peoples Burning Network (IPBN), and Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges (TREX and WTREX) have launched a new website! At firenetworks.org you’ll find information about each of the networks and the way they tackle our fire challenges with unique and complementary approaches to a common goal.

In the News

Map of the Rio Grande Water Fund spanning land ownership and jurisdictions

The Rio Grande Water Fund is highlighted as “one example of an emerging adaptation strategy that is working within—and beyond—existing legal and policy frameworks to accomplish more collaborative efforts across jurisdictional lines and administrative barriers” in the Frontiers in Climate article “Adaptive Governance Strategies to Address Wildfire and Watershed Resilience in New Mexico's Upper Rio Grande Watershed.”

Wildfire Wednesdays #123: How Cross-Boundary Partnerships Bolster Fire Adapted Communities - A Success Story

 Hello FAC NM followers,

Starting the process of working within our communities to become fire adapted is often challenging, and it can be even more difficult to sustain. Making headway requires a force of will, a collective push for change, and ideal conditions coalescing! While the barriers to progress can feel daunting, you are far from alone in your work to build communal resilience. This week, we highlight the success of one community’s partnerships and the extensive wildfire mitigation work that these partnerships have enabled.

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:

  • The story of Horseshoe Springs Association’s (HSA) Jemez Mountains wildfire mitigation work

  • Takeaways from HSA’s success

  • Updates and opportunities

Best,
Dayl

Horseshoe Springs Association’s wildfire mitigation work in the Jemez Mountains

Fall scene in the Jemez Mountains captured using a drone camera. Photo by Mario Pratti

Working together for landscape resilience

Picture this: It’s a warm summer day in a lovely, forested neighborhood in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico. Picturesque cabins dot the hillsides and nestle among the trees. The sun is streaming through a canopy of spruce, fir, and pine, the air smells astringent and fresh, and the sounds of equipment and voices are deadened by a hush created by the mature coniferous forest and its soft duff-covered floor. Residents are out in their yards raking pine needles, chipping slash, and pruning and thinning ladder fuels from the forest around their homes. Everyone is pitching in to do the work that can keep their community safe from wildfire. The community recently received wildfire risk mitigation funding from their local Soil and Water Conservation District, a crucial partnership which enables them to complete this work to improve defensible space in the neighborhood. Nearby, on adjacent Forest Service land, contractors are completing a thinning project on hundreds of acres that will further ensure the community’s resilience to fire. All this work lies within the footprint and is one component of a larger cross-jurisdictional project to increase the resilience of forests and watersheds…

If it sounds a bit too idyllic to be true, we invite you to learn about the Horseshoe Springs Association (HSA).

This scene (with some artistic license on the writer’s part) is the story of HSA, a neighborhood of 50 homes and cabins established in the La Cueva area of the Jemez Mountains in the 1950s and 60s. Their community showcases the success enabled by functional partnerships across agencies and organizations.

In the early days of the neighborhood, there were fire and safety rules in place that required cabin owners to rake pine needles within 30 feet of structures or fuel sources such as wood piles and propane tanks—rules which were later incorporated into the Association’s covenants. Community chipper days to process slash have been held by the Association nearly annually for the last 15 years. Moving beyond individual responsibility, the community has actively partnered with the Forest Service for decades. In the early 2000s, forest thinning to reduce tree densities was completed on HSA’s 64 acres of common land through the USDA Forest Land Enhancement Program (FLEP). The Forest Service began thinning 257 acres of National Forest adjacent to the neighborhood in summer of 2023. A recent partnership with the Cuba Soil and Water Conservation District has brought in grant funding to support hazardous fuel reduction by contractors on private land in the community.

Current status and future work

A ponderosa pine forest in the Jemez Mountains, before and after a thinning project. Sue Harrelson/USFS

As of fall 2023, 27 out of 50 cabin owners in HSA have signed up for thinning through the Cuba SWCD grant and about half of those have already had their property thinned.  Another 10-15 cabins were already at or below the target density level, leaving fewer than twenty percent of the cabins with higher-than-recommended tree density.  In addition, HSA has applied to have 20 acres of common land thinned under the grant program, focusing on the areas closest to possible ignition sources. This community-level work dovetails with the mission of the 2-3-2 Cohesive Strategy Partnership, a landscape-scale effort to promote resilient forests and watersheds in northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. HSA lies within the project boundary of the 2-3-2, allowing for each project to leverage the funding and forest resilience work of the other by creating landscape-scale restoration areas. This overlap will further enhance the Association’s dedicated mitigation work.

Horseshoe Springs Association is well on its way to becoming fully realized as a Fire Adapted Community, but they couldn’t have done it alone. It is through cross-boundary partnerships and landscape-scale work that they continue to protect themselves from wildfires that regularly move through the Jemez Mountains. When thinking about our work in forest resilience, it is important to acknowledge that much of our regional land management wisdom is derived from the selective logging performed by Ancestral Pueblo people who coexisted with frequent fires in the Jemez. The work of HSA also takes root in the residents’ respect for fire and their understanding that “fire is a question of when, not if”, in the words of resident Brent Bonwell.

Learning from the Success of Others

Close calls as a call to action

This map shows the proximity of the Cerro Pelado Fire to local communities on May 4, 2022. La Cueva, where HSA is located, was 7 miles from the fire. Image sourced from Los Alamos Reporter.

Wildfires have come close to the community - the 2022 Cerro Pelado fire came within seven miles of the neighborhood, and large fires in the past, such as Las Conchas in 2011 and Thompson Ridge in 2013, have loomed threateningly nearby. While fire has played an important ecological role in ponderosa pine forests for millennia and historical tree-ring fire scar evidence shows that the large size of these modern fires is not unusual, the high-severity tree-killing nature of them is (see this story map of fires in the Jemez). That catastrophic quality is precisely what threatens neighborhoods in the wildland urban interface (WUI), like Horseshoe Springs, and compels them to accelerate their community protection efforts.

Learn more about the fire history of the La Cueva area of the Jemez Mountains in this report by Dendrochrologist Dr. Tom Swetnam.
Listen to Tom speak about fire history in the area at 12pm on November 14 in a FACNM webinar on Fire, Forests, and People in the Jemez Mountains, NM.

Key takeaways from HSA’s work

Communication across boundaries is essential. Without a strong relationship with the Forest Service, Cuba SWCD, and others, much of the thinning work in and around Horseshoe Springs may never have been completed.

Opportunities to fund these projects are important—without the money, how can we do the work? Property owners within the Cuba Soil and Water Conservation District had the opportunity to enter into cost-share agreements and have up to 80% of the cost of their thinning work paid. Local grant programs like these are essential to empowering communities. FAC NM offers microgrants to provide seed funding for community protection efforts like this.

This work takes time. It has taken HSA decades, the dedication of individual landowners, and opportunistic partnerships to reach the point they are at now, with over 80% of properties in the neighborhood thinned to a recommended tree density.

Everyone has a role to play in fire adaptation and ecological restoration. It is through collective action, education, and overlapping projects that we will see large-scale fire adaptation.

Upcoming Events and Opportunities

Webinars

November 1st, 2023, 10:00 - 11:30am MDT: Smoke: State of the Science
Join for a live virtual session focused on the State of the Science about smoke. This facilitated panel discussion will be guided by your questions. Registration is required. Live session will be recorded and posted on the Rocky Mountain Research Station website here: SYCU - Webinars | US Forest Service Research and Development

December 14th, 2023 9am - 10:30am ET: The Future is Smoky, one of four Fueling Collaboration sessions
With increasing wildfire activity due to changes in climate, smoke will likely become more prevalent and continue to have an effect on society. Earlier this year, smoke from Canada wildfires lowered air quality in the eastern U.S. to its worst levels in recorded history. As the climate heats up and creates drier conditions, smoky skies will grow increasingly common. Health concerns and prescribed burning actions needed to restore functioning ecosystems will be impacted by already smoky conditions across the country. Panelists include research meteorologists, air quality experts, and fire practitioners. Together, they will explore how we can address and adapt to a smoky future.

Wildfire Wednesdays #122: LANDFIRE data and planning

Hi FACNM community,

As wildfire frequency and severity continue to increase, we must be strategic in where and when we complete forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction work. As Forest Service chief Vicki Christiansen put it, '“instead of random acts of restoration, we must share decisions and place treatments where they can produce desired outcomes at a meaningful scale.”

To support strategic planning for wildfire risk reduction, we must use the best available data for the biophysical conditions within our planning areas. One of the most commonly used data sources for planning fire and forest management projects, is LANDFIRE data. Our planning and modelling for fire and forestry projects is limited by the quality of the LANDFIRE dataset. With this in mind, this week’s Wildfire Wednesdays will focus on sharing information about how we can improve the quality and accuracy of the LANDFIRE dataset by providing input for the 2023 update that is happening now.

This Wildfire Wednesday’s includes:

  • An overview of LANDFIRE data

  • Information about how to provide updates to the LANDFIRE dataset

  • Wildfire Risk to Communities - a user-friendly tool for LANDFIRE data

  • A webinar about how LANDFIRE data is used for modelling

  • General updates and opportunities

Best,
Gabe

LANDFIRE Overview

LANDFIRE data is used to establish wildfire risk for ranking funding proposals, insurance industry evaluations of risk, fire management planning, and more. This dataset is behind much of the work we do and it is important that we understand it.

LANDFIRE (LF), Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools, is a shared program between the wildland fire management programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior, providing landscape scale geo-spatial products to support cross-boundary planning, management, and operations.

LF data characterize the current and historical states of vegetation, fuels, fire regimes, and disturbances. LF produces a comprehensive, consistent, scientifically credible suite of more than 25 geospatial layers, a reference database, and a set of quantitative vegetation models at a national extent. LF data supports landscape assessments, analysis, and natural resource management. LF supplements and assists modeling of fire behavior and effects.

Update LANDFIRE Dataset

LF has transitioned to annual updates and needs as much time as possible to process data. LF is asking for data to be submitted or available in database systems by October 31st. Please make every effort to have your FY 2023 data accessible to LF by October 31, 2023. Data accessibility may include entering data into online databases/Systems of Record (SOR) so it can be obtained by LF. Data submitted after the deadline will be used if schedules allow. All data contributions must meet LF requirements.

The primary focus of this data call is to collect FY 2023 disturbance and treatment activities. To make annual updates possible LF is asking for data from the fiscal year which runs from 10/01/2022 – 09/30/2023. LF now requires disturbance/treatment date or fiscal year to be included with your data submission,. This will ensure your data are processed correctly. The secondary focus is to collect vegetation/fuel plot data. LF also welcomes feedback on current products.

LF needs your help to collect four types of data:

  • Disturbance/Treatment polygons: Disturbance and treatment polygons are first priority data for updates (LF 2012, LF 2014, etc.) and are processed and maintained in the LF Events Geodatabase.

  • Vegetation and Fuel Plot data:Vegetation and fuel plot data are the first priority data for mapping (LF c2001 / LF Remap) and are processed and maintained in the LF Reference Database (LFRDB)

  • Invasive Species Data: LF is accepting submissions of polygon or plot based invasive species data.

  • Lidar Data Lidar data are first priority data for mapping (LF Remap) and will be used to develop vegetation structure models.

  • Feedback on LF products: Feedback is secondary priority data for updates and remaps.
    Submit feedback through the LF Help Desk.

For data submission, questions, or you are aware of other data sources, contact:

Brenda Lundberg
LANDFIRE Reference Data Administrator
blundberg@contractor.usgs.gov

Using LANDFIRE Data

Not everyone needs to have GIS abilities to use LANDFIRE data to understand and explore their wildfire risk. To make the dataset more accessible, the USDA Forest Service created the Wildfire Risk to Communities tool.

Wildfire Risk to Communities is built from nationally consistent data, including:

  • Vegetation and fire-behavior fuel models from the interagency LANDFIRE program

  • Topographic data from the United States Geological Survey

  • Historical weather patterns from the National Weather Service

  • Long-term simulations of large wildfire behavior from the USDA Forest Service

  • Community data from U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Energy

Upcoming Events and Opportunities

Webinars

SWFSC: Overview and Verification of LANDFIRE Fuels: 2022 Cooks Peak Fire

Nov 8, 2023 12:00 PM  MT

A practitioner-oriented overview of LANDFIRE with a focus on fuels and how they react to modeling techniques. The subject area of discussion will be the 2022 Cooks Peak fire located in northern New Mexico. This webinar will be technical in its application and may offer insights for both beginner and advanced LANDFIRE users.

Presenters: Tobin Smail, LANDFIRE Next Gen Fuels Lead, USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station Fire Modeling Institute; and Charley Martin, LANDFIRE Fuels, TSSC Contract USGS/KBR

FACNM - Fire, Forests, and People in the Jemez Mountains, NM: The Long View from Tree Rings and Archaeology

Nov 14th, 12:00 PM MT

In this webinar from the Fire Adapted New Mexico learning network, presenter Dr. Thomas Swetnam discusses the long view on fire, forests, and people in the Southwest through the lens of tree rings (dendrochronology) and archaeology. Although the past is not a perfect guide for the future, the history of people, forests and fires in the Jemez Mountains provides useful insights for restoring and living within resilient forest landscapes today.

View the webinar by registering through Zoom or by joining through Facebook Live on November 14 at 12:00pm.

Job Opportunities

State Forestry Division is hiring two full-time year-round Wildland Fire Hotshot Crews

Applications for hotshot crew superintendent are being accepted now.

The Forest Stewards Guild is hiring a Watershed Restoration Manager in the SW

Applications for the manager are being accepted now.


Wildfire Wednesdays #121: Understanding Past, Present, and Future Fire Patterns Through Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Analysis

Hello, FACNM readers!

My name is Dayl Velasco. I’m a project coordinator at the Forest Stewards Guild and the newest contributor to the FACNM blog. Much of my work revolves around fire, from assisting with prescribed burns to collecting data on forest health pre- and post-thinning and burning to measure landscape resilience, and I’m excited to continue working in this realm as I help to coordinate the FACNM learning network. Nice to meet you!

Today’s Wildfire Wednesday focuses on how scientists use the life history of fire scarred trees that is recorded in their rings (seen in a crosscut of wood) to understand historic fire regimes and date specific fire events. You’ll be introduced to the North American Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Network, which was compiled in 2022 and contains over 37,000 sampled trees across North America. You’ll learn about work closer to home with a brief overview of New Mexico’s own Jemez Mountains Tree-Ring Lab and the research they do and the story of a recently analyzed old ponderosa pine that fell near Jemez Springs and offered its tales up to science, to be absorbed into the tree-ring network. Throughout, we’ll keep in mind how this research guides our work to build resilience in our forests and communities.

This Wildfire Wednesday features information on:

  • Understanding past, present, and future fire patterns through tree-ring fire-scar analysis

  • Close to home: the largest mountain-range fire scar network in North America

  • Applying the science to FACNM

  • Resources and Upcoming Opportunities

-Dayl

Understanding past, present, and future fire patterns through tree-ring fire-scar analysis

Back to basics: what is tree ring analysis?

Ellis Margolis cross dates an old piece of ponderosa pine from the Tesuque watershed outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Collin Haffey, USGS Public domain.

In a world where wildfires are increasing in severity year-after-year, driven by climatic changes and increased fuel loads as a result of over 100 years of fire suppression, we know that fire is a force we must learn to live with. This is especially true in the southwest’s fire-adapted forests. As we move toward adaptation ourselves, it is helpful to ground our current understanding of wildfire in the context of centuries-old fire regimes. So, how do we build this historical context?

This is where the trees and the scientists who study them come in. First, some basics: if you’ve ever seen a cut tree stump, you’ve probably noticed that the top of a stump has a series of concentric rings. These rings can tell us how old the tree is, and what the weather was like during each year of the tree’s life. The light-colored rings represent wood that grew in the spring and early summer, while the dark rings represent wood that grew in the late summer and fall. One light ring plus one dark ring equals one year of the tree’s life (NASA, 2017). Dendrochronology is the study of these tree rings to answer questions about the natural world and the place of humans in its functioning.

Trees contain immense histories in their rings and dendrochronologists understand how to read and interpret these records. The information preserved in tree-ring growth records, from fires to weather conditions, reads like a history of the land where they grew for their entire life span - that can be over 1,000 years for some trees! Historical environmental conditions are expressed as wide or narrow rings or changes in growth patterns. Wide rings indicate years of plentiful moisture while narrow rings indicate drought. Ring width can also be correlated with temperature, especially in cooler climates and higher elevations. Learn more about tree rings from the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

Fire scar position and seasonality within the tree-ring and corresponding calendar year. Click to view an enlarged image.

When a fire moves through a forest, some trees may burn and experience damage to their cambium - or living tissue just below the bark - but not die. This results in a fire scar, where a tree produces sap to cover its scorch wound. As the tree heals and grows around the scorch wound, these scars remain visible within the growth ring of the year in which the fire occurred. It’s important to note that if a tree has recorded multiple fire events, the fires it experienced were likely low- to moderate-severity, or just intense enough to create a scar but not enough to kill the tree. High-severity fires are traceable through tree rings as well, but scientists depend on a record from trees that were able to survive on the less intense outer edges of these fires since trees in the middle are often casualties of the blaze. A robust dataset of tree-ring fire scars, taken from a broad area, can tell us the exact year and season a fire burned, its severity and size, and overall fire frequency from centuries before modern records began.

This field fire history reconstruction through tree-ring fire scars is called Dendropyrochronology (for all you logophiles out there). Read a more in-depth description of fire history reconstruction here.

The North American Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Network

Yellow dots represent the more than 2,500 fire-scar sites that currently make up the network across North America. Credit: Ellis Margolis, USGS.

The North American Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Network was formed in 2022 and compiles tree-ring data from more than 2,500 sites across the entire North American continent. Through the network arise new opportunities to understand the influences of climate, humans, and land use on past, current, and future fire regimes.

The team that undertook the monumental task of analyzing data from more than 37,000 fire-scarred trees across North America found evidence of historical low-severity fire in all but two ecoregions of the continent. This evidence was often found in areas that have not burned for one hundred years or more due to anthropogenic fire suppression.

The network also shows that human influence strongly impacts fire regimes. This is clearly demonstrated at the border of the United States and Mexico, where fires stopped being recorded in the tree ring record on the U.S. side around 1900 as suppression became the norm (creating the fire deficit that helped set the stage for modern megafires), but on the other side in northern Mexico fires continued to burn, be recorded in tree rings, and maintain resilient ecosystems to the present day.

Read more about the North American Tree-Ring Fire-Scar Network in this article.

Dendropyrochronology Close to Home

The largest mountain-range fire scar network in North America: fire regime reconstruction in the Jemez Mountains

The tree-ring fire scar network in the Jemez Mountains covering >300,000 acres.  Colored symbols represent individual fire-scarred trees from different collections over 30 years. Public domain.

Let’s zoom back in on the Southwest. There is a long history of tree-ring research here, with plentiful old trees, aged tree stumps, and remnant wood present in archaeological structures. Over the past 30 years, New Mexico researchers have built the largest tree-ring fire scar network for a single mountain range - the Jemez Mountains - in North America. The Jemez network currently includes 1,343 trees and 9,014 fire scars with these numbers ever-increasing. The Jemez Mountains Tree-Ring Lab has many concurrent research projects across the Southwest in service of the overarching goal of researching the effects of climate variability on forest ecology, fire ecology, and ecohydrology. Locally, in the Jemez mountains, the lab is working to understand the area burned since 1600 CE over a 300,000-acre landscape. These fire reconstructions allow scientists to place the large fires of recent years into a historical context.

Tree Ring Analysis from Horseshoe Springs

Brent Bonwell cutting the cross section.

Shortly after the completion of a forest thinning treatment near Jemez Springs, Horseshoe Springs community member Brent Bonwell noticed that a large dead ponderosa pine had fallen, and upon closer observation he saw a well-defined fire scar at its base.  He wondered if it would be possible to learn about the fire history of the area by cutting a cross section from the tree and having the tree rings dated to determine exact years of fire events. The tree had seen more than the typical number of fire events in its lifetime, with 17 total scars recorded. 13 of the 17 fire events coincide with some of the largest fires recorded among other fire scar sampling sites in the Jemez Mountains. The tree showed no fires recorded after 1900, reflecting the systematic fire suppression that began at the turn of the 20th century. Read the full report written by Thomas Swetnam of the Jemez Mountains Tree-Ring Lab.

Applying the science

How fire history guides our work with Fire Adapted Communities

Ponderosa Pine forest after thinning and burning.

The research being done at tree-ring labs across the world focuses on the interactions between humans, ecosystems, fire, and climate. Many studies are designed to inform forest and fire management decisions by enabling the comparison of our present fire regimes to centuries-long records and historic regimes. In populated areas where communities and their water supplies are potentially threatened by high-severity fires, science-management partnerships use tree ring research to guide land management decisions and goals, with a prime local example being the landscape-scale work of the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition. Historical reference points provided by tree ring collections and data give managers examples of more resilient forest conditions and fire regimes. Managers can in turn work toward these ideal conditions when acting to restore forests and fire regimes and mitigate wildfire risk in our wildland-urban interface. Every little bit of ecologically-informed forest restoration, whether it's happening on thousands of acres of federal land or in your back yard, is a step in the direction of protecting communities, returning ecosystem functions and biodiversity, and addressing climate change.

Resources and Upcoming Opportunities

In-person Learning

Applications due October 15th: Fire Leadership For Women (FLFW) 20-Day Session

The National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (NIPFTC) is hosting three training sessions for women in wildland fire management. Participants will experience 10 to 12 days of hands-on burning in complex situations such as wildland urban interface, various fuel types, and will work for several different agencies with unique management objectives. Participants will gain up-to-date knowledge on prescribed fire safety, prescribed fire planning, smoke screening tools, monitoring, and current fire policy.

January session: 01/07/2024 through 01/26/2024

February session: 02/11/2024 through 03/01/2024

March session: 03/10/2024 through 03/29/2024

October 26, 6:00pm, Taos, NM: Future Forests- Living with Fire

Join The Nature Conservancy for a conversation with a panel of experts to talk about the future of forests and how we can manage our forests better in New Mexico. TNC’s Forest and Watershed Health Manager Matt Piccarello will moderate this session that will include an opportunity for audience members to ask questions of the experts.

Webinars

FACNM Fall Webinar Series: Prescribed Fire in New Mexico

FACNM is hosting speakers from across the state (and the country) this autumn to talk about many different aspects of prescribed fire!

First up, join us on October 11th to hear Dr. Makoto Kelp present research that indicates that prescribed fire implemented in priority areas in the West may lower the likelihood and severity of future wildfire smoke during a joint FACNM-SWFSC webinar. Register Now!

On November 14, Dr. Tom Swetnam will discuss research showing that traditional Indigenous fire management may have interrupted the connection between climatic conditions and wildfire behavior at a local level.
To close the series, on December 7, Sam Berry and Brian Filip will discuss implementation of prescribed fire in the state of New Mexico, including the new Prescribed Burner Certification Program and All Hands All Lands. Download the flyer to learn more.

Keep an eye on the FACNM Events page for November and December webinar registration announcements!

Additional Reading and Resources

3 Things Outdoor Recreationists Need to Know About Wildfire — Outdoor Alliance article on how recreationists can support a more fire resilient future through education and support for policy reform.

WildfireSAFE provides simplified access to an advanced suite of fire weather and products to support fire management decisions. Visit the website to view weather & potential for wildfires across the nation.