K-12 Education

Prescribed fire is widely viewed as a useful but risky ecosystem management tool, and liability is a crucial issue for prescribed burning on private and public land. Basic liability rules motivate landowners to reduce risk when making choices about the use of fire. Liability therefore influences land use through incentives, and so has important consequences for the larger ecological landscape. Strict liability rules may lead to too little prescribed fire use, while negligence rules may, under certain circumstances, lead to too much. Although prescribed fire provides broad public benefits, such as reduction of wildfire risk or enhanced ecosystem health, the application of liability rules by courts often discourages its use as a vegetation management option. Various approaches exist for improving the laws and regulations surrounding prescribed fire.

Lightning is known to spark wildfires. Across the country, lightning frequencies vary greatly (World lightning frequency maps). In the Great Plains, lightning is often accompanied by rain and therefore is less likely to ignite wildfires. Nevertheless, mother nature does sometimes start fires here in the GP.

Have you ever seen a tree that seems to have exploded? Have you ever wondered why trees explode when lightning strikes them? Here’s a blog post from Ian Lunt’s Ecological Research Site to help us understand the process.

ianluntecology.com/2015/01/18/lightning-trees-people/

It all starts with the soil. In fact, 2015 has been dubbed the International Year of Soil. In that spirit, throughout this year we will make a special effort to pass along grassland soil science relevant to the fire community.

The Journal of Ecology has a special virtual issue focused on below ground interactions. This issue contains several papers related to grasslands that might spark your interest.

www.journalofecology.org/view/0/VI_Soil.html 

This report looks at the economic and social impacts of fuels treatments in an effort to answer persistent questions asked by Congress as they consider funding levels. Although this report is focused on woodlands, especially in the Southwest, I think the implications are important for the whole fire community. The sections on the wildland urban interface (where the natural areas meet the cities) are particularly important in the Great Plains.

Considerable prescribed fire research has been conducted on Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) and redberry juniper (J. pinchotii) communities in Texas. Prescribed fire is an effective, cost competitive method of controlling juniper. This paper outlines how to safely and efficiently conduct prescribed fires in juniper communities and discusses vegetation responses in the two major juniper types found in Texas.

In 1963, Omer C. Stewart, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, wrote an article about the use of fire by aboriginal peoples. This publication was not regarded with much importance when Stewart first presented it, but now his ideas are more respected within the fire community. Stewart focused on the value of learning about the ways indigenous peoples used fire as an ecological management tool. His article “Barriers to Understanding the Influence of Use of Fire by Aborigines on Vegetation” discusses the importance of taking time to learn from aboriginal people about their historical use of fire. In addition, Stewart addresses several reasons that historical information acquired from indigenous people is often disregarded in the realm of science.

In this article, Twidwell and others compared accident and fatality rates for wildland fire (wildfire and prescribed fire) to related occupations such as construction, animal production, crop production, and logging. Firefighters had the least fatalities from 2006-2013. Prescribed fire had far fewer fatal injuries than wildfire from 1963-2013. The authors caution that the datasets have limitations and really provide an approximation.

This report describes a new set of standard fire behavior fuel models for use with Rothermel’s surface fire spread model and the relationship of the new set to the original set of 13 fire behavior fuel models. To assist with transition to using the new fuel models, a fuel model selection guide, fuel model crosswalk, and set of fuel model photos are provided.

This handout was published in 2005, but it contains good information. Topics covered include history of fire use in Texas, fire ecology in different ecoregions, use of fire in wildlife management, several case studies, roles of fire management agencies, and increasing stakeholder involvement.

The recent increase of wildfires in the southern Great Plains has illustrated a need for development and application of fuels (vegetation) management techniques in the region. Fuels management is crucial to fire suppression and fire fighter safety, as the amount of fuel directly influences flame lengths. Flame lengths, in turn, are among the primary factors used to describe fire intensity, which has a direct impact on the ability to suppress wildfires.