Pre-Fire Intervention - Thinning and Prescribed Burning

Module Description: The Fire Ecology and Management Series is provided by the Northwest Center for Sustainable Resources and includes six modules. This series “is designed to address both the general role of fire in ecosystems as well as specific wildfire management issues in forest ecosystems.” The six modules include Ecological Role of Fire, Historical Fire Regimes and their Application to Forest Management, Anatomy of a Wildfire – the B&B Complex Fires, Pre-Fire Intervention – Thinning and Prescribed Burning, Post-Wildfire (Salvage) Logging – the Controversy, and An Evaluation of Media Coverage of Wilderness Issues.

Pre-Fire Intervention – Thinning and Prescribed Burning is the fourth of six modules and is intended for courses that support disciplines such as Forestry, Wildlife, and Environmental Sciences. This module “examines forest thinning and prescribed burning methods for reducing the probability of catastrophic fire and restoring forest ecosystems.” The module can be taught independently or as part of the series.

Module Contents: The PowerPoint presentation includes lecture notes and covers the context in which the practices of forest thinning and prescribed burning have been proposed as solutions and presents some evidence that evaluates their effectiveness.

The 42-page document provides information about the module and includes four sections: Module Description, General Lecture Outline, PowerPoint Slides with Instructor’s Notes, and Resources.