IAWF Names New Executive Director

The International Association of Wildland Fire's board of directors has selected William Ranieri as the organization's new executive director. Ranieri is the managing partner and CEO of Prime Management Services, an association management company in Birmingham, Ala., with a client base of international professional and trade associations.

Effective July 1, this transition makes available to the IAWF a staff of professionals to better serve members' needs. Ranieri comes with two other professional staff members, Jim Ranieri and Robert Ranieri. In addition, Anna Trott, Ashanti Pretlow and Heidi Gentry will be available to answer any questions regarding the association.

The IAWF will offices now be located at 3416 Primm Lane, Birmingham, Ala., 35216. The new local phone number is 205-824-7614. The toll-free number will remain the same at 888-440-IAWF.

IAWF officials thanked previous executive director Bill Gabbert for the work he has done for the association. Gabbert began writing articles and product reviews for WILDFIRE magazine in 1996 and wrote 31 articles over a 12-year period. He served on the board of directors from 1998 to 2005, and as executive director from January 2005 until June 2008.

Gabbert will devote more time to his wildland-fire consulting business and his blog about wildland-fire news, Wildfire Today.

Sept. 1-3: Fire 2008: Fire, Environment and Society, Adelaide, Australia. This 15th annual Australasian Fire Emergency Service Authorities Council conference will offer a wide range of international, Australasian and local speakers. The IAWF is planning a meeting during the conference.

Sept. 22-27: The Fires of '88: Yellowstone and Beyond, Snow King Resort, Jackson, Wyo. The International Association of Wildland Fire and the Ninth Biennial Scientific Conference on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem will sponsor this conference to remember the events of the Yellowstone-area fires of 1988. These history-making fires will provide springboards for discussions and presentations about lessons learned, fire effects, large-fire management, policy, research related to the fires, the use of fire as a management tool, and many other issues. (See page 25 for more details.) The IAWF's annual membership meeting will be held Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Oct. 21-22: Aerial Firefighting Conference, Athens, Greece. This conference is held in conjunction with the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Response, Global Fire Monitoring Center and a consortium of international sponsors. This is the first conference focused on fixed- and rotary-winged technologies and operations. Operators from Australia, South Africa, Russia, Italy, France, South Korea, Spain, Greece, Croatia, Canada and the United States will talk about their operational experiences. Ministries of Interior, Agriculture and Forestry and ground fire brigades also will attend. The Hellenic Air Force and other international operators will host a demonstration at Elefsis Air Force Base.

A panel session will discuss a European initiative to develop a cross-border rapid-reaction aerial firefighting squadron to assist with pan-European wildfires. Christopher Allen from the European Union's Environment General Directorate Civil Protection Unit will host the panel. There will be a second panel session that covers air pollution from wildfires hosted by Milt Statheropolous, Council of Europe-European Center for Forest Fires.

Interested parties can register at www.bdaero.com/register.html. A downloadable flyer about the conference is available at www.iawfonline.org/blog/2008/06/aerial-firefighting-conference-registration-information.

April 28-30, 2009: 10th Wildland Fire Safety Summit, Phoenix. The IAWF, in cooperation with the National Wildfire Coordinating Group's Safety and Health Working Team, has issued a preliminary announcement for the 10th Wildland Fire Safety Summit. A variety of topics have been identified, but a summit focus will be on the 10-year anniversary of the Tri-Data survey and changes since it's release. Details will be made available at www.iawfonline.org/blog/2008/05/10th-wildland-fire-safety-summit-preliminary-announcement. Announcements for papers and posters will be issued soon.

The IAWF board of directors accepted a proposal by CSIRO to increase the number of issues of the International Journal of Wildland Fire from six per year to eight. The growing number of high-quality international wildland-fire research papers being submitted prompted the change. There also will be a slight cost increase to cover the postage for the extra issues, but this will not affect IAWF members who subscribe.

Papers in the most recent issue of the journal cover fire ecology and history, fire weather and fuels and include:

Wildland Fire Probabilities Estimated from Weather Model-Deduced Monthly Mean Fire Danger Indices, by Haiganoush K. Preisler, Shyh-Chin Chen, Francis Fujioka, John W. Benoit and Anthony L. Westerling. Fire-danger indices evaluated from a regional simulation weather model were used to estimate probabilities of large fire events on monthly and 1° grid scales. This paves a way to assess the skill of climate forecast outputs in predicting wildland fire severity with known precision.

Fire Ignitions Related to Radar Reflectivity Patterns in Arizona and New Mexico, by Beth L. Hall. Lightning-ignited wildfires in the south-western United States are examined in conjunction with radar reflectivity and cloud-to-ground lightning data. Information pursued through the analysis included whether or not lightning-ignited fires occurred near the perimeter of stationary or non-stationary thunderstorms and tend to occur at the leading edges of thunderstorms in the early stages of the storm's development.

Fire Activity in Portugal and Its Relationship to Weather and the Canadian Fire Weather Index System, by A. Carvalho, M.D. Flannigan, K. Logan, A.I. Miranda and C. Borrego. The paper addresses how area burned and forest fire occurrences in Portugal are related to the weather and the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System. Statistical analysis indicates that much of the area burned and the number of fires in Portugal is explained by the weather variables and the FWI system components.

Fire and Stand History in Two Limber Pine (Pinus Flexilus) and Rocky Mountain Bristlecone Pine (Pinus Aristata) Stands in Colorado, by Peter M. Brown and Anna W. Schoettle. Fire-scar and tree-recruitment chronologies were developed from two limber and bristlecone pine sites in Colorado. Population structures in both sites document relationships with disturbances and changes in climate and land use over the past several centuries, and provide the longest such records yet developed for this area of North America.

Dendroclimatic Inference of Wildfire Activity in Quebec Over the 20th Century and Implications for Natural Disturbance-Based Forest Management at the Northern Limit of the Commercial Forest, by Héloïse Le Goff, Martin P. Girardin, Mike D. Flannigan and Yves Bergeron. The climate signal recorded by tree growth was used to reconstruct the regional fire activity further back in the past. The climate pattern controlling regional fire activity has been relatively stable since 1904 and may be used to forecast the severity of the fire season a few weeks in advance.

A Comparison of Five Sampling Techniques to Estimate Surface Fuel Loading in Montane Forests, by Pamela G. Sikkink and Robert E. Keane. Five fuel-sampling techniques were compared across six fuel classes. The paper explores how fuel-loading values differ using each technique, how each method's results compared with a reference sample, and how prior experience in fuel-load sampling affects some results. The authors also addressed the tradeoffs associated with using each method.

Using Visual Obstruction to Estimate Heathland Fuel Load and Structure, by G. M. Davies, A. Hamilton, A. Smith and C. J. Legg. The authors present a simple, non-destructive technique for assessing wildland fuels by visual obstruction. Calibration gives relevant information on fuel load, vertical fuel structure and spatial heterogeneity. This “fuel rule” method is tested in Calluna vulgaris heathlands but could be calibrated for other habitats where vegetation is up to 1 meter high.

Implementation of Mid-Scale Fire Regime Condition Class Mapping, by Louis Provencher, Jeff Campbell and Jan Nachlinger. The authors mapped the departure of existing vegetation structure conditions from the natural range of variability in the Mount Grant area of western Nevada to plan fuels restoration projects to meet resource management goals. Fire-sensitive woodlands were found within the natural range of variability, whereas departure increased for shrubland and riparian systems.

Post-Dispersal Seed Predation in Pinus Halepensis and Consequences on Seedling Establishment After Fire, by Maria José Broncano, Anselm Rodrigo and Javier Retana. Seed predation is an important factor for many plant species. The authors showed that Pinus halepensis seed predation is carried out mainly by rodents, and has large spatial and temporal variability in both burned and unburned areas. A few years after fire, seed predation may be a factor affecting seedling establishment in burned areas.

Assessing Mitigation of Wildfire Severity by Fuel Treatments — An Example from the Coastal Plain of Mississippi, by Erik J. Martinson and Philip N. Omi. Methods for evaluating fuel treatment effectiveness are illustrated with an example from an escaped prescribed fire that burned into an area previously treated with repeated prescribed fires. Moderated fire severity in the treated area is attributed to an altered fuel profile created by the repeated prescribed fires.

The Relative Importance of Fine-scale Fuel Mosaics on Reducing Fire Risk in Southwest Tasmania, Australia, by Karen J. King, Ross A. Bradstock, Geoffrey J. Cary, Joanne Chapman and Jon B. Marsden-Smedley. The relative importance of fine-scale fuel mosaics in prescribed burning with respect to treatment level and spatial patterning of treatment units was determined using the computer simulation model FIRESCAPE-SWTAS in the World Heritage Area of south-west Tasmania, Australia. Fire size distributions, fire incidences, mean annual areas burnt, and risks to defined values in the landscape were assessed.

Mapping the Severity of Fire Using Object-Based Classification of Ikonos Imagery, by G.H. Mitri and I.Z. Gitas. This study aimed to develop a method to map the severity of forest fire by employing very-high-resolution satellite imagery. A model that would distinguish between different degrees of fire severity was developed and the accuracy of the results was verified by employing field-collected data. Overall accuracy was estimated to be 83%. The main conclusion drawn from this work was that the built classification model has the potential to produce accurate maps of fire severity, especially in the case of the open Mediterranean forest.

IAWF board member Ann Walker has accepted a position with the Western Governors Association and will move to Denver to be the new forest health and biomass program director. Walker previously worked at the Oregon Department of Forestry, where she was the national fire plan coordinator in the Protection From Fire Program.

Fire 2008: Fire, Environment & Society
Sept. 1-3, 2008
Adelaide, Australia

The ‘88 Fires: Yellowstone and Beyond
Sept. 7-13, 2008
Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Aerial Firefighting Conference
Oct. 21-22, 2008
Athens, Greece

10th Wildland Fire Safety Summit
April 28-30, 2009
Phoenix

For a complete list of events, visit
www.iawfonline.org/conferences