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Fueling Discovery with USGS Wildland Fire Science is a public webinar series hosted by USGS Wildland Fire Science and the Ecosystems Mission Area. These webinars are meant to provide information on the breadth of USGS fire science used by stakeholders to make decisions before, during, and after wildfires in ecosystems across the U.S.
Date: Thursday, May 25th at 3pm ET
Title: Wildfire Risk Assessments, Gaps, and Opportunities
Speaker: Todd J. Hawbaker, Research Ecologist, USGS Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center
Summary: Wildfire burned area is increasing, creating challenges for federal agencies to reduce the negative impacts of wildfires on society while balancing their benefits to ecosystems. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) provided funding to help address this challenge but directed agencies to prioritize mitigation actions on lands with very high wildfire hazard potential. To help meet monitoring, maintenance, and treatment plan requirements under the BIL, the USGS inventoried existing wildfire hazard and risk assessments and created an interactive web application, or clearinghouse, to navigate the inventory. The inventory and clearinghouse document the variation among assessments and that no assessment perfectly represents all lands or values at risk. They also provide baseline information to evaluate and identify existing hazard and risk assessment gaps. This presentation highlights the inventory and clearinghouse, reviews the existing wildfire hazard and risk assessments, identifies gaps in the assessments, and opportunities to fill those gaps.
Title: The Wildland Fire Trends Tool: A web-based data visualization tool for displaying wildfire trends and patterns in the western United States
Speakers:
Douglas J. Shinneman, Research Ecologist, USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Michelle I Jeffries, Ecologist, USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center
Description: Accurately assessing recent and historical wildfire activity is critical for numerous agencies who manage fire-prone landscapes. The Wildland Fire Trends Tool (WFTT) is a data visualization and analysis tool that calculates and displays wildfire trends and patterns for the western U.S. based on user-selected regions of interest, time periods, and ecosystem types. For instance, users can determine whether the area burned by wildfire is increasing or decreasing over time for a specific ecoregion or for land ownership types of interest. The tool is available via a web application and generates a variety of maps, graphs, and tabular data that provide useful information for fire science and management objectives, as well as for the interested public.