Forest Management History

NorCal Lightning Fires and Madre Fire – 7/3/2025

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7/3/2025 California Fire Report Zeke Lunder discussed the current fire situation in Northern California, highlighting several active fires. The Green Fire near Round Mountain is 100 acres, the Horse Fire near Lake Shasta is 220 acres, and the Helena Fire near the North Fork of the Trinity River is in difficult terrain. The Madre Fire … Read more

Roadless Areas on National Forests

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This post and video were inspired by a Facebook post from our local congressman, Doug LaMalfa, in regards to the Forest Service reforming the 2001 ‘Roadless Rule’, which placed large contiguous areas which were still unroaded in 1979 into a protected status which prevents future roadbuilding in these areas. My reply: Rep. LaMalfa claims “The … Read more

Will Harling Speaks on Burning at the Landscape Scale

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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

Reducing Wildfire Fuels in California: A Statewide Picture

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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

The Geography of California’s Water Systems

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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

Boise Fire – 8/13/2024

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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

Highway 32 Firing Ops and Fire Effects – Park Fire

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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

Park Fire from Space – 7/27/2024

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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

Will Harling on Fires in the Klamath

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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

Anvil Fire – 9/24/2023

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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

Anvil Fire and NW California Fires – 9/23/2023

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Rain is coming! In today’s video, we look at weather satellites, assess the current lay of the Anvil and SRF Complex Fires, and talk about lighting large prescribed fires out ahead of weather systems. Also, we interview Rachel Smith, Klamath National Forest Supervisor. We couldn’t get a video interview, so had to use a puppet. … Read more

Anvil Fire and NW California Fires – 9/22/2023

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The Anvil Fire has been active, with drier, windier conditions over the past couple days. This fire has been burning for nearly a month just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first several weeks, but over the past week, it has seen major growth in most directions. We look at the … Read more

Anvil Fire and NW California Fires – 9/21/2023

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Strong winds have pushed the Anvil Fire around a bit in the past couple days. This fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of … Read more

Anvil Fire and NW California Fires – 9/17/2023

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The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements. We also look at … Read more

Anvil Fire and NW California Fires – 9/16/2023

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The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements. We also look at … Read more

Anvil Fire – 9/15/2023

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The Anvil Fire has been burning for about 3 weeks just inland of Port Orford, Oregon. It spread slowly for the first two weeks, but in the past several days, it has seen major growth. We look at the geography of the fire, and review detailed maps of its recent movements.   ” Thanks always … Read more

Complexities of Indirect Firefighting – NW California Fires, 9/14/2023

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In mid-August, 2023, lightning ignited many fires across NW California. Several became large, but most have stayed fairly small by modern standards. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, but even before then, the majority of the fire effects on these fires were low-moderate severity and ecologically beneficial. … Read more

Barely Moving – NW California Fires 9/12/2023

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Over the past 3 weeks, lightning has ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, and since then, though conditions have been slowly drying, there has been very little active fire spread. This video looks … Read more

How to maximize Good Fire? – NW California and Oregon Fires 9/5/2023

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Over the past 3 weeks, lightning has ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, but even before then, the majority of the fire effects on these fires were low-moderate severity and ecologically beneficial. We’ll … Read more

Where is the heat? NW California and Oregon Fires 9/4/2023

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Over the past 3 weeks, lightning has ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. Rain knocked most of these fires down over the first few days of September, and also prevented mapping using aerial infrared. New mapping was available on the morning of 9/4, and this video looks … Read more

Understanding Fire Effects

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Over the past 3 weeks, lightning ignited many fires in NW California and Western Oregon and several have become large. This video uses satellite imagery from 8/31/2023 to evaluate how hot the fires burned in different areas. We discuss factors affecting differences in fire severity and what burn patterns can tell us about past land … Read more

NW California and Oregon Fires 8/31/2023

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Today’s Livestream aired at 8 am. Today’s Lookout livestream provides an overview of the largest fires burning in Northern California and Oregon. We talk about how the North winds have influenced fire behavior, look at firing operations, and learn how the fires have behaved over the past 24 hours. Zeke takes a look at the … Read more

Wildfire 101

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This piece comes to us from Brè Orcasitas. Brè is the author of The Evolving Nomad blog site and a wildland firefighter with 16 years of experience which includes: Engine Crew, Hotshot Crew, Helicopter Rappeller, Smokejumper, and Field Operations Specialist. Wildfire 101 When you spend your life hiking around steep hillsides, digging in the dirt and … Read more

Six Rivers Lightning Complex – August 22, 2022

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Here’s Zeke’s latest video from the morning of August 22. He’s answering live chat questions at the end of the videos these days, so if that appeals to you, he’s streaming on YouTube at 7am Pacific Time during the week.  Catch the live broadcast.

From Zeke:

We look at the growth of the fire on 8/21/2022, and look for patterns in historic logging and fire severity around the SRF Lightning Complex Fires near Trinity Village, Salyer and Willow Creek, Trinity County, California.

We also talk about fire severity mapping and the limitations of using satellite imagery.

 

 

 

Six Rivers Lightning Complex – August 19, 2022

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Hi everyone! Here’s Zeke’s latest video on the SRF Lightning Complex with an exciting live Q&A with viewers during the last eight minutes of the stream. He looks at historic logging around the SRF Lightning Complex Fires near Trinity Village, Salyer and Willow Cree in Trinity County, California. He also looks at the Kennedy Fire, … Read more

McKinney and Yeti Fires – August 4, 2022

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McKinney and Yeti Fires Maps: Zeke Lunder Captions: Ryan Stephens Table of Contents: McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney Fire Yeti Fire    McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast: —McKinney Fire— To better understand what’s happening around the fire and in our maps, Click here to watch the Thursday morning August 4 McKinney … Read more

Interview with Veteran Wildland Firefighter Jim Klump

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Zeke sat down with Jim Klump, a veteran wildland firefighter and old-school Redding smokejumper who was the District Fire Management Officer on the Plumas National Forest for 25 years. They talked about the intersection of fire and forestry, land management, people, leadership, and history. The interview took place in May 2022.

 

They also talked about PTSD, firefighting tactics, landscape-scale backfiring operations, climate change, immigration, the culture of the Forest Service from the 60s to the present, and the survival prospects of our wildfire-threatened rural communities.

This video features Google Earth map animations, historic aerial photos, historic photos from UC Davis and Chico State and aerial video from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center.

 

 

Fire Management in the Ishi Wilderness & Lassen Foothills

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We have been covering the Graham Fire for past two days and this video gives an overview of the challenges that arise wile managing wildfires in the almost one million acres of the “Lassen Foothills,” bordered by Red Bluff and Cohasset Ridge and the Sacramento Valley and Lassen Volcanic National Park.       There … Read more

Dixie Fire Stories Interview

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I did an interview a couple months ago with Joanne Burgueño, a photographer who helps run the Dixie Fire Stories page on Facebook. They have been running multi-part interviews, with photos, with people who went thru the Dixie Fire in one way or another. Here it is: My name is Zeke Lunder. I’m a geographer … Read more