About things humans do to get the outcomes they want from the land.
On 4/18/2025, Terra Fuego Resource Foundation crews conducted a 60 acre prescribed burn for the Butte County Fire Safe Council on land owned and managed by the Paradise Unified School District. This project used fire to reduce forest undergrowth, pine needles, branches, and logs in an area that has been thinned, masticated, and chipped over … Read more
In March we took a spring break trip to the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara, and the Santa Lucia Mountains east of Morro Bay. We looked at wildfire hazards in the tiny, cliff-dwelling of a town my wife grew up in, and returned to an area where I worked in 2001 to look at … Read more
If you’ve followed our work, you’ve probably heard about my friend and colleague, Will Harling, who is a leader in bringing community-based prescribed fire back to the Klamath River after a century of fire exclusion and criminalization of native burning by local tribes. Locals on the River have been through a lot of fire, and … Read more
As the US Forest Service has lost internal capacity to get projects planned, awarded, and managed, it has become increasingly reliant on ‘partners’ – NGO agencies – to do a lot of the work Forest Service employees used to do. Until she was fired as a part of sweeping workforce reductions being carried out by … Read more
In a state as vast as California, there’s no single recipe for land management to reduce the risk of wildfires burning into neighborhoods. In Northern California, vegetation management in many cases involves thinning forests to reduce fuel loads and create fire breaks. In Southern California, the focus is often on managing brush around urban areas, … Read more
It’s wet in Northern California, and seems like a good time to talk about hydrology – the study of water movement on the earth’s surface. Here is tonight’s livestream, as summarized by a robot. Zeke Lunder, a geographer, discusses hydrology, focusing on the current storms in Northern California. He explains hydrology as the study … Read more
Summary Zeke Lunder discusses California’s complex water management system, using GIS data and live mapping to visualize water supply, demand, and delivery systems. He explains that 75-80% of California’s water originates north of Sacramento, with 40% of annual flows used for agriculture and 10% for urban and industrial uses. Key rivers include the Klamath, Sacramento, … Read more
Since last night, the Palisades Fire has been quite active on the NE corner, between Topanga and the 405 corridor. Also, there have been active firing operations along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains between Topanga and San Vicente Mountain Park. Tonight’s Lookout Livestream looks at today’s major events on the Palisades Fire, and … Read more
When homes are densely packed in alignment with the direction of strong fire-season winds, it is nearly almost impossible to cut enough brush to make the homes defensible. Fire burns from house to house, no longer a ‘brush fire’, rather it is referred to as an ‘urban conflagration’ or simply a ‘conflagration’. Wind-driven brush fires … Read more
Storms like the one we just had here in Northern California are a real learning experience. If you want to understand the hydrology of a place, there is no substitute for being out on the ground when water is flowing. Our newest Lookout video is a mashup of on-the-ground video, maps, and commentary on things … Read more
The Shoe Fire is burning in timber on Fenders Ferry Road, between McCloud River and Pit River, north of Lake Shasta. It has been building steadily since about 1:45pm, in an area with very little fire history, poor access, and heavy fuels. Webcam here: https://ops.alertcalifornia.org/cam-console/15596 Area Fire History The Bagley Fire burned to the north, … Read more
August 16, 2024: Overall, things are looking good around the fire today. Over the past 24 hours, crews have continued to make progress, particularly on the north and west sides of the fire where mopping up and securing firelines have been the primary focus. The recent cooler temperatures and higher humidity levels have moderated fire … Read more
8/14/2024 – 6:30am. In yesterday’s post we talked about the high potential for the Boise Fire to cross Boise Creek and make a big run up the north fork of Boise Creek. That happened yesterday evening. We’ve also been talking on the Livestream about how some locals have been pushing for the incident management team … Read more
Here is a video that was posted recently to YouTube by a user who goes by Brandon Beans. It includes a sporty flight over Upper Park, and some slower views of the area where the Park Fire was ignited. The video shows mixed severity fire effects in Upper Park. Many of the blue oak trees … Read more
We have been using the Boise Fire as an opportunity to talk about the social aspects of fire management in the Klamath Mountains. If you missed those stories, you can watch them in the two videos embedded at the end of this post. 5pm UPDATE: The maps below show the fire’s location at 2:40pm, today, … Read more
Successful Firing Operation at the Park Fire: A Case Study Satellite imagery by Zeke Lunder Written by Ryan Stephens In late July, we took a trip up Highway 32 to observe the aftermath of a firing operation conducted to control the spread of the Park Fire. This operation was a critical measure to mitigate the … Read more
The Lookout’s Zeke Lunder was on KQED’s forum on Friday, 8/2/2024 to talk about the Park Fire and wildfire resilience in California, in general. Here is a transcription of our conversation. You can listen to the broadcast here: Mina Kim Welcome to forum. I’m Mina Kim. Hotter temperatures expected this weekend and possible dry … Read more
July 30th Update – Ryan Cowper Stephens Firefighting efforts on the Park Fire have yielded notable progress, though the situation remains dynamic, and with some seemingly insurmountable challenges to overcome, particularly on the Northern and Eastern flanks of the fire. The fire continues to burn very actively in remote, steep and inaccessible terrain. The added … Read more
Today the European Space Agency’s Sentinel Satellite went over the Park Fire. This satellite passes over every 5 days, and has sensors which can see through smoke and detect heat. We use Sentinel data a lot in my day job for vegetation and fuel mapping, but during wildfires, especially on fires as large as the … Read more
Here is a really rough map of where the Park Fire might be at midnight, 7/24/2024. Red lines are camera azimuths, where heat was apparent. Crosses in the red lines are potential places the fire has reached. The red, yellow, and orange squares are satellite heat detections, and the blue polygon is Cal Fire’s (6,000 … Read more
A Northern California wildfire is burning in a vast swath of land where trees are protected in exchange for so-called carbon credits. The Shelly Fire, which ignited July 3 in Siskiyou County, has spread across thousands of acres of land owned by the Portland-based Ecotrust Forest Management, or EFM. The investment firm protects the trees … Read more
Today we are sharing an interview with firefighting veteran Jim Klump, who is something of a legend in the wildland fire world. Jim worked as a firefighter, smokejumper, helicopter crew superintendent and district fire management officer over the course of a U.S. Forest Service career that spanned four decades. Jim was part of the first … Read more
Hey everyone, happy Thanksgiving. Today we’ve got a special feature – an interview with Bruno Seraphin and Deniss Martinez, who recently helped write a paper on indigenous fire futures which puts forward the thesis that if we are talking about giving land back to Native Americans, many communities won’t be able to thrive or manage … Read more
What did the 2021 Dixie Fire teach us about our public lands and how they are managed? What are we doing well, and what could we do better? In reflecting on the lessons learned from the Dixie Fire, The Lookout spoke with Danny Cluck, a biologist with U.S. Forest Service working in the Modoc, Lassen, Plumas … Read more
Five years ago this week, the Camp Fire roared through Butte County, California, torching the town of Paradise and killing 85 people in its path, becoming the deadliest wildfire in California’s recorded history. The anniversary of the fire, which ignited the morning of November 8, 2018, has prompted many in Butte County to reflect on … Read more
While many of the managers overseeing prescribed burns are former firefighters, there are others who take different roads into fire leadership. Claire Monahan is on one of those alternative paths. Claire has worked in increasingly complex roles as a prescribed fire practitioner and fire scientist on the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. Claire was introduced … Read more
Have you ever wondered what goes into planning and executing a prescribed burning project? Join a fire monitoring crew inside a burn in the Butte County foothills, near Chico, California. The Terra Fuego Resource Foundation, from Chico, wrote the burn plan and provided the burn boss. Deer Creek Resources and the Butte County RCD developed … Read more
In Chico, California’s popular Bidwell Park, a normally brown, grassy landscape has been transformed this summer into a black, burnt one. That’s the result of a prescribed burn aimed at creating a wildfire buffer around the city. While the changed landscape may be a temporary eyesore for the thousands of people who visit the park … Read more
Will Harling and I are sort of like brothers from different mothers. Both of us were raised up by the long-haired wolves, timber fallers, mechanics, railroaders, gold miners, and other outlaws who populate the hillbilly sticks of far Northern California. First opening day fishing trip with the grown-ups, Mill Creek, California, 1985. Not surprisingly, as … Read more
Rain is coming, but will high winds spread the fire farther north before it begins in earnest? We take a quick look at IR mapping from the evening of 9/23/2023 and assess current fire spread and tactics. We also watch footage of a very low drop from a DC-10 airtanker on the NE corner of … Read more