Yosemite National Park Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2009

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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). Two thousand and nine will be remembered as a big year of change for Yosemite Fire Management. Several employees in key positions left Yosemite for lateral moves or promotions to other agencies. The National Fire Policy changed to allow us to better implement multiple objectives under one fire code and fully implement the Wildland Fire Decision Support System on “unplanned” ignitions. We lost a prescribed fire into the 1990 Arch Rock fire scar just above the community of Foresta on 26 August and we lost Isaiah Hirschfield to the BLM in October. Isaiah is now a Fire Intelligence Officer in Portland, OR at the Northwest GACC. The Fire Ecologist hopes to have that position filled by February 2010. It was a very active fire season this year in Yosemite. The first fire of the season was lightning caused and started just after 1700 above the store in El Portal as all the Fire Management staff were heading back to their duty stations from a long day of orientation. We managed fires (Grouse, Harden, Wildcat Fires) throughout the season culminating with the Big Meadow Fire. In contrast with unplanned ignitions, planned ignitions were few this year. We burned 34 acres above El Portal in a mostly grass fuel type. We also burned 33 acres in Big Meadow in Foresta. The Big Meadow burn was an 89 acre poison oak grass fuel type burn that escaped in the first hour of ignition so the project was not completed. We treated 155 acres with pile burning in June, and 120 acres of mechanical thinning and mowing. Twenty-three FMH plots were visited and read this year. Eighteen of the visits were re-reads post prescribed burn (Re) and five were immediate post-burn reads (Post). Eighty-two “Retro” or Sydoriak plots were read this year in Yosemite Valley, Big Creek, and Aspen Valley; seven post-wildfire Rapid Assessment plots were read in the Frog Fire, and forty-two CBI plots were read in the North Mountain Fire. In addition to plot reads, the fire effects crew participated on prescribed burns and wildfires and spent a total of four weeks on research projects.

Yosemite National Park Fire Ecology Annual Report: Calendar Year 2009

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