Prescribed Fire Research and Monitoring
Following the passage of Senate Bill 1260 and Executive Order B-52-18 in 2018, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) created the Joint Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program to strengthen the partnership between the State’s air and fire management agencies, enhance smoke monitoring, and to support public outreach campaigns for prescribed fire. Together, we characterize both regional air quality trends related to prescribed fire, and project-scale air quality impacts from the use of prescribed fire.
California's Strategic Plan for Expanding the use of Beneficial Fire
CAL FIRE has a prescribed program that is focused on fuel reduction. You can read about it here: https://www.fire.ca.gov/programs/resource-management/resource-protection-improvement/vegetation-management-program/prescribed-fire/
Program Updates
The most recently monitored burns were at Henry Coe State Park, Wilder State Park, Inyo National Forest, and Bouverie Wildflower Preserve.
The California Forest Carbon Plan proposes to significantly increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and prescribedfire by 2030. The large and unprecedented increase in prescribed fire foreseen for California ecosystems over the coming decades represents a fundamental shift in vegetation management strategy and policy. While the use of prescribed fire as a management tool, and the reintroduction of fire back into fire-adapted forest ecosystems are both well supported, the implications of such a large change to forest management on the contemporary landscape will require close scrutiny in order to improve best management practices, minimize potentially harmful impacts, prioritize investments, and achieve statewide objectives. It is therefore imperative that implementation be accompanied by research and monitoring.
Following the passage of Senate Bill 1260 and Executive Order B-52-18 in 2018, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) created the Joint Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program to strengthen the partnership between the State’s air and fire management agencies, enhance smoke monitoring, and to support public outreach campaigns for prescribed fire. Together, we characterize both regional air quality trends related to prescribed fire, and project-scale air quality impacts from the use of prescribed fire.
Additional research and monitoring investments build on the near-term (smoke) impacts from prescribed fire and help the State evaluate the long-term effects of prescribed fire beyond the number of acres burned. The California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program is a partnership with FRAP and UC Davis designed to measure fuels, vegetation, and forest structure before and after prescribed fire projects across all land ownerships in California. We characterize treatment effectiveness, and link fire behavior observations to weather conditions and fire effects. We track study sites for multiple years following prescribed fire to characterize impacts to carbon dynamics, tree mortality, and species diversity. Our program is currently expanding to support a broader coalition of research partners and prescribed fire research topics, including climatology and burn window analyses.
The California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program provides also analytical tools and methods to support local monitoring efforts for CALFIRE Environmental Scientists, and the private burning community. For more information, please reach out to joe.restaino@fire.ca.gov.
More Information coming soon
