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Document describing the mission and values that will inform the Landscape Resilience Strategy for the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition

The Sandia Park Scenic Byway Firewise Community is hosting a Fire Fair to help residents prepare for fire season.

The Las Conchas Fire: Flames and Floods in the Valles Caldera

All ecosystems are dynamic, changing due to growth, succession and disturbances. Modeling large landscapes in the United States requires the collective knowledge of experienced and knowledgeable vegetation and fire experts. In collaboration with hundreds of colleagues, LANDFIRE produced more than 1,000 state-and-transitions models and descriptions — one for every ecosystem (called Biophysical Settings or BpS) mapped by the Program. The result is a major contribution to basic and applied vegetation ecology across the country.

Draft resolution designating the Santa Fe Fireshed, under consideration by the Santa Fe City Council. Distributed at 12/18/15 Santa Fe Cohesive Strategy meeting.

Briefing Paper on Santa Fe Watershed Protection: Looking Outside the Boundary

A century of fire exclusion in dry forests across the United States has resulted in high fuel loads and increasing dominance by fire-intolerant vegetation. Federal, state, and private agencies have adopted a goal of managing forests to reduce the risk of high-severity wildfire. Forest managers use a variety of tools to create desired conditions within forests; the most common are prescribed fire and mechanical thinning. These two treatments may be used separately or in combination, depending on restoration goals for the forest stand. Before these treatments can be applied, managers must justify their choice by documenting the effects of the treatment on other ecosystem components, such as understory vegetation. Understory vegetation in fire-dominated landscapes often has adapted to regrowing in frequent, low-severity fire regimes. Because fire releases nutrients and, by opening the canopy, allows light to the forest floor, the understory response is positive (e.g., increased growth or reproduction).

The New Mexico Association of Counties' guidelines for entities updating their Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

August 4, 2015 article in Washington Post

USFS Report released August 4, 2015