Post-fire flooding showing sand bags and a street that looks like a river, it is full of muddy water.

Post-fire Flooding: The Museum Fire

The Museum Fire in 2019 burned 1,961 acres and a record monsoon season in 2021 caused post-fire flooding from the burn scar, which affected many homes and businesses. The Story Map aims to outline the full timeline of the fire, the aftermath and flooding, and considerations for the future. Topics include the Flagstaff Watershed Protection …

Postfire Management in Frequent-Fire Conifer Forests

Presenter: Dr. Jens T. Stevens, National Program Lead for the Wildland Fire and Fuels Research, USDA Forest ServiceDate: January 19, 2022 12pm Mountain Standard Time The increasing incidence of large wildfires with extensive stand-replacing effects across the southwestern United States is altering the contemporary forest management template within historically frequent-fire conifer forests. While management of …

Full-Cost Accounting of the 2010 Schultz Fire

Presenter: Dr. Melanie Colavito, Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University; Dr. Catrin Edgeley, Northern Arizona University; and Dr. Evan Hjerpe, Conservation Economics InstituteDate: December 7, 2021 12pm Mountain Time The 2010 Schultz Fire was ignited by an abandoned campfire on June 20 and burned 15,075 acres northeast of Flagstaff, Arizona. Following the fire, intense monsoon …

Repeat Photography and Post-Fire Ecosystem Change in SE Arizona

Date: October 26, 2021 1pm AZ/2pm MDTPresenters: Jim Malusa, University of Arizona, with an introduction by Don Falk, University of Arizona While making a vegetation map of the Chiricahua Mts in 2010, I took georeferenced photos and notes on the canopy cover of dominant species, in ecosystems ranging from grassland to spruce-fir.  The next year, …

The Fire x Post-Fire Double Double Emergency

Date: Wednesday February 10, 2021 2:30-4pm Mountain Time This webinar brings together a panel of postfire response experts to reflect on their experiences in addressing community needs during recent large fires. The discussion highlighted important differences in fire and postfire response on federal and non-federal lands, and a consideration of existing tools and policies and …

Mitigating Postfire Runoff and Erosion

Wildfires in the southwestern US are getting larger, more frequent, and more severe due to changing climatic conditions like rising temperatures and prolonged drought (Singleton et al. 2018, Mueller et al. 2020). Catastrophic wildfire events directly impact communities, ecosystems, and cultural resources—and can pose continuing hazards long after the fire is extinguished. Flooding and erosion …

East Jemez Landscape Futures

Date: December 15, 2020 12pm Mountain Time The East Jemez Landscape Futures (EJLF) project is a collaborative, landscape-scale approach to help guide future planning and research efforts in the severely altered landscapes of the eastern Jemez Mountains. EJLF seeks to address uncertainty by building a network of land managers, scientists, artists, NGOs and interested community members …

Wildfire-Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American landscapes

Presenters: Jonathan Coop, Western Colorado University; Sean Parks, USDA Forest Service; Camille Stevens-Rumann, Colorado State UniversityDate: November 18, 2020 11am Mountain Time Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A …

Southwest Vegetation Type Conversion: A workshop summary

by Rachel M. Gregg, EcoAdapt, and Laura A. Marshall, University of Arizona Increasingly common large and severe fires in the Southwest are now often followed by vegetation type conversions (VTC) where once-dominant vegetation fails to return to its pre-fire state. Case studies have documented abrupt transitions from forests to shrublands or from shrublands to grasslands. …