Land Management

About things humans do to get the outcomes they want from the land.

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

Thoughts on Urban Fires and How We Assess Risk

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Our most destructive fires often occur in places most people don’t think of as being ‘wildlands’, but people from Paradise, Santa Rosa, Boulder County, and Lahaina have learned the hard way, living in an urban environment doesn’t mean your place isn’t at risk of burning down. This video talks about the difference between wildfires and … Read more

Weighing the Costs: Fire Suppression vs. Prescribed Fire

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Firefighting is often far more expensive, and more dangerous to firefighters, than prescribed burning, but officials in California have done little to invest in substantively expanding the use of prescribed fire. To illustrate the difference in cost between fire suppression and preemptive forest management practices, we took a look at how much our government has … 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

NW California and Oregon Fires 8/29/2023

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Today’s Livestream aired at 8am. Lightning has ignited many fires in Western Oregon and several have become large. This video provides an overview of the largest fires, the Tyee Ridge Complex, the Chilcoot Fire east of Roseburg and Glide, the Lookout Fire, near MacKenzie Bridge, and the Camp Creek Fire, in Portland’s water supply, the … Read more

Dry Lightning

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Let’s talk lightning! At least once a decade in California, a few hours of abundant and widespread ‘dry lightning’ (no rain) turn an average wildfire season into an exceptional one. Thousands of wildfires start, some in remote areas, and many will burn until fall rains come. Unlike human-caused fires, which grow quickly when they ignite … 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

An interview with Wolfy Rougle

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We sat down recently with Wolfgang (Wolfy) Rougle to talk about prescribed fire, and efforts she is helping lead to increase local capacity for citizen-led prescribed burning in Butte County, Califorina. The Butte County Prescribed Burn Association has been running for several years, and has helped landowners to safely burn on private property around Forest … 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 6, 2022 – WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF MASSIVE FISH KILL ON KLAMATH RIVER

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McKinney and Yeti fires Maps and Captions: Ryan Stephens and Zeke Lunder Yeti photos and on the ground Yeti fire info: Jamie Allen WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF MASSIVE FISH KILL ON KLAMATH RIVER   Table of Contents: Zeke’s Video Briefing on YouTube Debris Flows and Fish Kill McKinney and Yeti Fire Weather Forecast McKinney … 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

McKinney Fire – August 1, 2022

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Video briefing: Blog briefing: Per August 1, 2022 Facebook fire behavior briefing from Dennis Burns: Portions of the fire got rain last night. This, along with higher relative humidities and good cloud cover is helping moderate fire behavior, allowing crews to go direct in many places, including in the 2014 burn scar north of the … 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

Echo Lake & the Caldor Fire

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Zeke sat down with Junet Bedayn, from the Echo Lake Environment Fund to talk about the 2021 Caldor Fire, and it’s landscape-scale effects on the forests it burned across. Junet grew up spending summers at cabins on Echo Lake, located on the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just south of Lake Tahoe, and she … 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

Good Fire Out There

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As things move slowly here during winter, I thought I’d take some time and share some of the materials that are out there about Good Fire. Here are a few worthy offerings. The first is a short video about fire-adapted forests in Oregon and a prescribed burning TREX in Oregon put out by The Nature … Read more

A Conversation with Sue Husari

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Lassen Hotshots, 1977. Zeke: Okay. We have a visitor today, Sue Husari, legendary wildland firefighter, one of the first female Hotshots, and leader in American wildland fire with a fire career spanning 5 decades. Welcome to The Lookout, Sue! When did you know that you were going to have a career in fire? Sue Husari: … Read more

How Can You Tell If A Fire-Damaged Tree is Going to Die?

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In this video we talk with Danny Cluck about factors that influence the survival of conifer trees that have been damaged by wildfire. I first got to know Danny in the mid-’90s when we were both working for the U.S. Forest Service. I was on a tree-marking crew and he was a biologist who would … Read more

Southern Sierra Fires – 10/1/2021

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KNP COMPLEX Maps and commentary by: Ryan Stephens ***Noon on October 1  ~ KNP Complex Weather Update by Incident Meteorologist Jason Straub Watch the weather update here. ***10am on October 1 ~ Morning briefing video from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Watch today’s briefing here. ***9:30pm on September 30 ~ Sequoia and Kings Canyon … Read more

Southern Sierra Fires – 9/21/2021

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9/21/2021 at 6am KNP COMPLEX Today’s Briefing Map IR Interpreter’s log Jeremy Hurd: Minor growth to perimeter, with the most significant in the SSW areas. Center of the perimeter continues to show some isolated heat sources as the scattered heat continues to withdraw toward the outer perimeters. Below are maps of the KNP Complex burning … Read more

Southern Sierra Fires – 9/19/2021

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9/19/2021 at 7:30am – Maps from Ryan Stephens Below are maps of the KNP Complex burning in Sequoia National Park made from infrared data captured at 2350PDT on September 18. IR Interpreter Alex Pincus log: -Imagery shows the fire advancing to the East NE and has reached the Wuksachi Lodge and crossed Clover Creek in … Read more

Dixie Fire in Lassen Park – Animation

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Here is a great map made by our friend Peter Hansen showing the Dixie Fire‘s spread across Lassen Park. As we have discussed in length on previous posts, the 2012 Reading Fire was a managed wildfire that escaped control and burned out of the park. Nine years later, the Reading played a major role in … Read more