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Fall brings a myriad of colors around the country. The August BLM image of the Soda Fire (Hugo Sindelar) becomes a backdrop for sunflowers near Fargo, ND, (USDA), colorful aspens in Colorado (Patsee Ober) and Sandia Peak, NM, (John Fowler), a sunrise over a field of sage in Owyhee Uplands, ID, and corn bales in Pike County, OH, (Don O'Brien).
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We're thankful for you...
As 2018 winds down, LANDFIRE offers a sincere thank you to all who contributed to the program this year. Working collaboratively with partners and colleagues, we earned the U.S. Department of the Interior's prestigious Conservation Achievement Award, "Environmental Dream Team." Together, we are committed to developing national-scale, "all-lands" spatial products that provide wildland fire/fuels information to support strategic fire and resource management planning and analysis... and we realize that we couldn't do it without you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Teaching the Next Generation of LF Practitioners: Interview with Heather Heward, Senior Fire Instructor at the University of Idaho
"I love to learn almost as much as I love teaching. I am passionate about fire education and enjoy seeing the fire in my students as they learn about how they can make a difference in the broader world of fire ecology and management."
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Heather Heward teaches most of the on-campus fire classes at the University of Idaho where LF data is used: the "Prescribed Burning Lab," "Fire and Fuel Modeling," and "GIS Applications in Fire Ecology and Management" courses.
Heather's degrees from the University of Idaho are in Natural Resources Ecology and Conservation Biology with a minor in Fire Ecology and Management (B.S. 2006), and in Forestry, with an emphasis on remote observations of fires (M.S. 2009). Her fire career began in 2002. She worked eight seasons as a wildland firefighter in a variety of capacities, her favorite as a member of wildland fire modules in California and New Mexico.
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During and since completing her master's studies, Heather has worked frequently with The Nature Conservancy's prescribed burn training exchanges (TREX). Take a look at SparkED Resources, read our interview, and know that the next generation of fire ecology professionals is in very good hands.
FYI: Heather's two most recent LF videos (posted on our YouTube channel) are "Introduction to LANDFIRE" and "Acquiring LANDFIRE Data."
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We're thankful for partners, collaborators, and others who use LF data, highlight their value, and provide feedback, insight, and review.
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Universities/Colleges
BpS reviewers
Joint Fire Science Program
The Nature Conservancy
NatureServe
USDA NRCS
State agencies
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USDA Forest Service
US Department of the Interior
(BIA, BLM, USGS, FWS, NPS)
US Department of Defense
USGS LandCarbon
Wayne NF Forest Plan Revision Team
Hiawatha and Ottawa Ntl Forests
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We're thankful to "Super Users" for sharing LF experiences in our monthly postcard interviews. A few of their comments ...
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- LF products are useful, data applications are endless, and resources are easily accessible - Heather
- All the LF products are important. I use the EVT and Fuel Characteristics Classification System (FCCS) layers the most often. They are great. - Todd
- Because the methods used to develop LF are well established and based on the best available science, we had a strong foundation on which to build our plan. - Christine
- The LF Reference Database is an amazing resource for vegetation information, and one of the only vegetation plot databases that is comprehensive for the U.S. - Marion
- LF has the most consistent and best data available nationally on fire regimes, biophysical settings, and vegetative departures and dynamics. - Dave
- LF acts as a springboard to facilitate conversations about complex ecological systems, and often prompts questions that we may not have considered before. - Megan
- The Rio Grande Water Fund used LF data to produce return on investment studies demonstrating the reduction in expected fire hazard in high-value parts of the landscape. With these ROI studies helping to build the case, over $11 million of private and public funding had been invested in reducing wildfire risk these landscapes as of 2016. - Steve
- The bulk of my research involves landscape-scale fire behavior modeling. LF is my go-to source for creating the input files I need to characterize fuels and topography for modeling. - Nicole
- I wish more people knew about the strengths of the LF Biophysical Settings models. They are an underappreciated resource. - Jennifer
Find more interviews on LF's Conservation Gateway website, under " Applications" and on the recently updated Web-Hosted Application Map, the WHAM! Open the WHAM! with Firefox or Chrome. |
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LF Remap production is on schedule! The comprehensive mapping effort to create a new base map data suite representing 2016 ground conditions will be released incrementally, starting in early 2019.
Remap is designed to produce vegetation and fuels data that inform wildland fire and ecological decision systems. By using consistent methodologies and processes, and incorporating current satellite imagery, contemporary data sources, user contributed field plot data, and the latest software and hardware technologies, the resulting LF Remap products will offer significant improvements to all previous versions. More info about Remap can be found on the LF website.
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The LANDFIRE Program is a cooperative agreement between the USDA Forest Service, agencies of the Department of the Interior, and The Nature Conservancy. In accordance with Federal law and U.S. Department of Agriculture policy, the Program is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability.
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