Controlling fire was the first major technological advance made by early humans. These days, fire is still used as a management tool, but (usually!) under more prescribed conditions than in the Paleolithic. Prescribed fire is carried out in many different countries, by a wide variety of people, under a wide variety of circumstances. It is used on all of the inhabited continents, by trained professional personnel, resource managers, researchers, ranchers and farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, and private citizens. Among other things, prescribed fire can maintain or alter ecosystems, create or destroy habitat, promote wildlife populations or livestock populations, control weedy plants or liberate native species, restore ecosystems, and meet important sociocultural needs. And after a century of more of repression, fire use in management is experiencing a renaissance. Taken in sum, there is a huge diversity in prescribed burning purposes, principles, policies, and practices that can serve to incentivize and inform fire use around the world. In this webinar series, we present a survey of prescribed fire from around the globe, focused 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.

Webinar Schedule

February 27, 2024: Worldwide view on prescribed fire. Where are we?

April 2, 2024: Preparing for the “big one”: prescribed fire as a strategic fuel reduction tool

April 23, 2024: Traditional and long-time use of prescribed fire

Future dates to be announced

About the Artist: Josep Serra

My career as an illustrator of landscapes where fire passes or has passed, as well as other natural phenomena was born before the ashes of the Horta de Sant Joan wildfire accident (2009, Spain). But a few years later, it gained momentum and materialized in the ART&FIRE collection at the Pau Costa Foundation's hands. Since then, interest in representing figuratively and abstractly has grown as the potential of the new extreme wildfires has grown. All the tasks carried out obey a non-profit intention and are in the line of "artivism" in terms of social awareness about the role that each of us must play in preventing these phenomena that have already reached a ceiling in the capacity of extinction. I try in most cases to talk about fire visually but without being too catastrophist or utopian. This series is no exception.

Past Webinars

A worldwide view of the roles, status, and future of prescribed fire

February 27, 2024 900 PST | 1800 CET

View the recording here!

In the inaugural seminar of this series, four fire experts will provide an overview of prescribed fire from different viewpoints, disciplines, and regions. They will discuss the role of prescribed fire in ecosystems, connections to culture and community, best practices and performance metrics for evaluating outcomes, and they will speculate on the future of prescribed fire. This overview will provide a foundation for future seminars, each of which will cover these topics in greater depth.

Presented by:

Marc Castellnou, Wildland Fire Incident Commander and Fire Analyst, Catalan Fire Service, Spain

Paulo M. Fernandes, Associate Professor, Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Portugal

Morgan Varner, Director of Fire Research, Tall Timbers, USA

Luisa Alfaro, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Costa Rica

Preparing for the “big one”: prescribed fire as a strategic fuel reduction tool

April 2, 2024 900 - 1030 PST | 1800 - 1930 CET

View the recording here!

Wildfires are becoming bigger and more severe around the world, overwhelming firefighters’ capacity to control them. Prescribed fires can be used to safely introduce fire in the landscape and regulate fire regimes through fuel management and by building landscape resilience. Is this approach working?

This week, four fire experts will discuss how fire and resource managers are using prescribed fire to prevent wildfire spread. They will discuss strategic goals and tactics, tradeoffs between broad landscape resilience and local fuel management, and whether prescribed fire intensities are enough to affect outcomes.

Presenters:

Tessa Oliver Manager of the Western Cape Umbrella Fire Protection Association, South Africa

Jorge Andres Saavedra Corporacion Nacional forestal, CONAF, Chile

Marta Miralles, Catalan Fire Service, Spain

Stephen Fillmore, Fuels Operations Specialist USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Region, USA

Traditional and long-time use of prescribed fire

April 23, 2024 900 - 1030 PST | 1800 - 1930 CET

View the recording here!

Fire is still used as a cultural process and management tool in different regions worldwide. We focus on the examples of the Pyrenees, northern Spain and the open forests of South America. In these areas, local communities of shepherds, farmers, and hunters have continued to use fire actively as an uninterrupted landscape management tool for millennia.

However, the loss of local knowledge and the abandonment of rural areas have led to a decline in this practice. Once this knowledge is lost, it is difficult to recover. The knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation, and fire is not just a technique; it is also linked to day-to-day life, myths, and festivities.

Presenters:

-Eric Rigolot, Unité de recherche Écologie des Forêts Méditerranéennes (URFM), France

-Luis Alfonso Perez, Fire Service of the Asturias region, Spain

-Dario Coria, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), Santiago del Estero, Argentina

The International Prescribed Fire Webinar Series is organized and supported by California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program, a collaboration between CalFire and the Safford Lab at the University of California-Davis; and the California Fire Science Consortium.