“What did the IC say about the fuel models in the area where we’ll be performing burn out operations? I can’t wait to get my red card and work on my faller quals!” “The fire behavior forecast suggests that it’ll be weeks until we contain… Read More

Tell us about your job. As the district ranger for the Ashton/Island Park District of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, I manage people and resources. In 2011, I, along with several other community members, formed a working group in Island… Read More

Climate change can sometimes feel like an abstraction, especially in places with moderate weather, like where I live on the northern California coast. Even during periods of extreme drought or severe fire weather across the West, my coastal climate… Read More

When you get to work on Monday morning, what are your top priorities for the week? Over the weekend, we experienced an intense thunderstorm throughout the Salmon River and across the Klamath Mountains. With it, came extensive lightning, torrential… Read More

“Did you lock the house? Turn off the coffee pot? Pack the books?” That will be me next week, as my husband and I hit the road for a long-awaited beach getaway. Along with the beach towels, shade structure and sunscreen, books are at the top… Read More

Has Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) always been a part of your job? Since working at the Santa Fe Fire Department, FAC has been a part of my job description, even though it has not always been explicitly stated. In 2013, I attended the National… Read More

Several years ago, highly acclaimed author Stephen Pyne began a new series of short books on fire in key regions around the country, titled “To the Last Smoke.” His first book in the series, released last year, focuses on Florida. If you are asking… Read More

What does the Office of Wildland Fire do? The Office of Wildland Fire’s (OWF) principle roles are to develop policy for the management and oversight of the Department of the Interior’s (DOI) wildland fire programs and to ensure consistent… Read More

In January, I used my Science Tuesday post to vent about the notion of nature and its inherent and unproductive separatism. In February, the media went wild covering a paper (Balch et al. 2017) that had just been published in the Proceedings of the… Read More

Did you know they have federally listed endangered green pitcher plants in the mountains of north Georgia? Me neither. I learned this (and got to see some of these carnivorous plants) while participating in the 12th annual Southern Blue Ridge… Read More