October 2018 Postcard: DOI Panel, MoD-FIS Release, Todd Hawbaker, New WHAM!

Panel Presentation, Award Ceremony in D.C.

On September 10, 2018, a panel consisting of Henry Bastian, Alexa McKerrow, Clint Cross, and Jim Smith presented Foundational All-Lands Data for Improving Decisions in Land Management to the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Policy Analysis in Washington, DC. Among the topics they discussed are the inter-agency and interdepartmental approach to LF's product suite, and a look at applications (both spatial and non-spatial data) and innovations that are changing conservation. A substantive question/answer session followed the presentation. More than 300 people viewed the webinar in person or via streaming video.

Watch the panel presentation. Watch a short, informal award ceremony held at The Nature Conservancy's Worldwide Office in Arlington, VA. Additional award ceremonies will be held at the Office of Wildland Fire (OWF), USFS Fire and Aviation Management (FAM), Missoula Fire Science Laboratory (MFSL), USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center.

Photos: Above left: Katy Weidenfeller (Director of People and Operations, The Nature Conservancy), Jim Smith, (TNC) and Henry Bastian (Department of the Interior Office of Wildland Fire) at TNC. Above right: Jim Smith, Clint Cross (USDA Forest Service), Alexa McKerrow (US Geological Survey GAP/Core Science Analytics and Synthesis)), Henry Bastian.

Just released - 2018 Fall MoD-FIS for GB/SW United States

LF is pleased to announce the release of the 2018 Fall MoD-FIS products for the Great Basin and Southwest regions of the United States.

MoD-FIS, or the Modeling Dynamic Fuels with an Index System, seasonally modulates fuel model data and incorporates seasonal variability of herbaceous cover. These fine fuel measurements are then used to capture changes to fire behavior fuel models based on the current fire season's herbaceous production.

GB/SW MoD-FIS products are produced and released multiple times a year. For this release (Fall), the Southern region is produced - area in red; for the Spring release, the Northern Great Basin and Southern regions were produced - areas in cyan and red; and for the Summer release, all three regions were produced - areas in yellow, cyan, and red. See the legend below for the date range of the data used.

LF MoD-FIS products are available for download from the LF Data Distribution Site. Find out more about what MoD-FIS products are available around the U.S.

Providing Consistent Burned Area Data:

Todd Hawbaker, USGS Research Ecologist

After receiving a B.S. degree in animal ecology, Todd Hawbaker spent the next couple of years burning and restoring tallgrass prairie in southwestern Minnesota. From there, he earned both a Masters and Ph.D. in forestry before joining the U.S. Geological Survey in 2008 as a research ecologist. Todd's expertise includes land use change, land use and land cover, human impacts, ecological processes, and ecosystem functions.

Todd currently works at the Geosciences and Environmental Change Science Center in Denver, CO. His research combines remote sensing with statistical and process-based ecosystem simulation models to understand the drivers behind ecosystem disturbances and quantify the impacts of disturbances on human and natural systems. In developing a model to simulate future potential wildfires, Todd relied on LF's fire behavior fuel model layers in the algorithm to simulate fire spread. Read the interview.

New WHAM! is Here
Easy on the Eyes, Searchable by Category

The LF Web–Hosted Applications Map (WHAM!), our online, interactive map, calls up many data applications, their locations, and the partners we work with. Hover over a small bubble, click it, and a pop-up thumbnail provides a summary of the project, including pertinent links to resources. The Nature Conservancy's LF team edited the entries, put the map on a new platform, and added a NEW feature - check boxes for five categories that should make searching go quickly: Carbon and Climate," "Natural Resources," "Wildland Fire and Smoke," "Wildfire," and "Other." -- The latter, because LF applications frequently overlap, as the product suite is being used across multiple disciplines for many reasons.

For quick reference, the team developed a reference table that lists the130+ featured projects by state.More applications and user interviews are posted on TNC's Conservation Gateway, along with citations posted on the (wildly incomplete) publications page.

NOTE: Open the WHAM! with Firefox, Chrome, or Edge browsers. Explorer won't work.
2d NOTE: Are you using LF products? Please tell us - we update the WHAM! regularly.

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.

Henry Bastian
DOI Business Lead
Frank Fay
USFS Business Lead
Dean Mireau
USGS-LF Project Lead