North Pacific/Columbia Basin, Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2005

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A summary of fire ecology activities and program information for the Park/network including fire effects plot workload, staffing, management objectives and monitoring results, and planning, fire monitoring, communications, and research. Also included are staff accomplishments/areas of focus, future program direction and other optional information (e.g. data analysis graphics or presentations, annual highlights, publications, program challenges, unique solutions to problems, collaboration, photographs of monitoring/fire activities, and suggestions on FFI). The North Pacific / Columbia Basin fire ecologist and fire effects monitoring crew accomplished everything that they set out to do during the field season of 2005, and this was no minor feat. They installed six new forest plots in Stehekin of the North Cascades, monitored fire behavior on twelve plots in three prescribed burns (Stehekin, Young Hill of the San Juan Islands NHS, and Rock Creek of John Day Fossil Beds NM) and revisited thirty-four previously installed plots. The ecologist converted all of the data from the historic database (FMH) into the new fire effects assessment tool (FEAT) database. This enabled the crew to test data entry in the field using PDAs (pocket PCs) and to enter all of this year’s data into the new desktop program. In addition to their regular duties, one of the fire effects monitors, the student conservation assistant, and ecologist went out on a two-week fire assignment in Oregon that helped each to develop new fire management and interpretive skills. An escaped campfire threatened Stehekin during the time that they were gone (the Shady Fire), which the remainder of the fire effects crew assisted in suppressing. Both of these events helped to bring the fire effects monitoring and fire crew closer in their understanding of the methods involved in fire management and the importance of monitoring.

North Pacific/Columbia Basin, Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2005

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