Forest Explorer Newsletter - August 2025
Research Supporting Fire (Part 1) |
 Photo Credit
USDA Forest Service Photo.
A prescribed burn on the San Bernardino National Forest. Wildfires are common in the Western United States. In 2024, state agencies reported that wildfires burned more than 1 million acres in California, nearly 2 million acres in Oregon, and about 300,000 acres in Washington. The Pacific Southwest (PSW) and Pacific Northwest (PNW) Research Stations have long supported the diverse ecosystems of the Western United States, including Alaska, Hawaiʻi, and the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands. Below are a few ways our researchers are working to support land managers with wildfires.
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The Future of Fire: Ember Intelligence |
 A frame from one of the videos being used as training imagery for the Ember Intelligence project. A Forest Service Freefly Alta X unmanned aircraft system with a thermal-infrared camera captured the footage from several hundred feet above an intense prescribed burn for the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) campaign in Oct 2023.
Despite our best efforts, wildfires can be unpredictable. While researchers have developed effective mapping and satellite models in recent years, a single wildfire ember can still jump thousands of feet ahead of the fire front, igniting new fuels and creating spot fires. PNW researcher Dr. Adam Watts and University of Illinois-Chicago collaborators, Dr. A. Enis Cetin, Dr. Hulya Seferoglu, PhD student Shuaiang Rong, and project principal investigator Erdem Koyuncu, are working to create Ember Intelligence, a method for modeling ember development and production, to help predict how these fires will grow and change. The team plans to use unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—drones with special sensors—to monitor ember production. Paired with weather and fuels data, this work could be used to assist with wildland fire suppression and community preparedness, as embers in the wildland-urban interface can quickly ignite structures and dwellings. The team plans to eventually conduct this research in Utah, near the Fishlake National Forest, where the local community and firefighters are currently battling the Monroe Canyon Fire, which has burned more than 70,000 acres to date. For communities like Richfield and Monroe, Utah, Ember Intelligence hopes to improve community preparedness if, and when, they face future wildfire events.
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R&D on Fire Assignment |
 Photo Credit
USDA Forest Service photo by Frank K. Lake
Smoke as a result of the fires that made up the 2025 Orleans Complex.
While public land management for the Forest Service falls within the purview of the national forest system, land stewardship remains a part of the mission for all of us. When a wildfire breaks out, like the Orleans Complex fire on the Six Rivers National Forest, it’s imperative that fire-qualified (i.e., Red Card) Research and Development employees heed the call too (Chief’s wildfire letter May 2025 ). To support that effort, PSW Research Ecologist and Tribal Liaison Dr. Frank K. Lake spent several weeks supporting incident objectives of the Orleans Complex as a fireline-qualified resource advisor (REAF). In his role as a REAF, Dr. Lake advised incident command on navigating the complex needs of fire crews along with fulfilling our obligation to preserve the cultural resources of our partners, the Karuk and Yurok Tribes. It’s important for R&D science to reflect the reality of what fire managers are facing on the ground. As a REAF on assignment, working directly with fire crews provided Dr. Lake with real-time data and information about priority landscape fire behavior and the formulation of potential operational delineations (PODs)—key wildfire planning units with identified boundaries for safely engaging wildfires. R&D scientists like Dr. Lake cannot be on every fire; however, these experiences provide an opportunity for Dr. Lake to frame his science into meaningful tools and resources to support tribal partners and wildland firefighters.
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Mapping Fire Potential for Recreation DisplacementLast month, our newsletter touched on recreation displacement through the lens of social science. However, that was just one part of the whole story. The other major component of this work was the creation of interactive spatial maps for fire-prone landscapes in southern California. Wildfires of any size have the potential to close national forest sites to the public, with larger, more destructive wildfires leading to long-term recreation displacement by removing trail and campsite infrastructure, killing surrounding vegetation, and increasing recreation safety concerns. To help mitigate wildfire-related losses, PSW Research Ecologist Dr. Stacy Drury and Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow Sean Fleming created interactive maps for the Angeles, Cleveland, Los Padres, and San Bernardino National Forests. These maps use five spatial data inputs, allowing users to customize their map data view and include information on canopy height, flame length probability, potential heat per unit area (HPUA), burn probability, and potential fire severity (details to the right). These maps will support future wildfire preparedness planning, like fuel treatments, protecting valuable recreation resources. Additionally, these maps will support planning for recreation alternatives, allowing recreation officers to direct recreationalists to sites where wildfire effects on landscapes are predicted to be less severe.  Photo Credit
USDA Forest Service photo by Alyssa Thomas
Burn scars from the 2020 Bobcat fire in the Angeles National Forest.
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Webinars, Events, and Information |
Joining Forces PSW and PNW will be combining webinar series. Moving forward Lunch and Learns (PSW) and SciCast (PNW) will be known simply as SciCast. Stay tuned for future webinar updates. In the meantime, check out our most recent webinars below: |
PSW Lunch and Learn  |
Publication Highlight |
California’s Forest Products Industry and Timber HarvestScott, Samuel G.; Murray, Helena F.; Koch, Lucas P.; Dillon, Thale; Morgan, Todd A.; Christensen, Glenn A. 2025. California’s forest products industry and timber harvest, 2021. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-1034. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 20 p.  This report is the latest in a series documenting California’s forest industry and timber harvest being completed in partnership with the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program and the University of Montana’s College of Business, Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) program. We conducted a census of all facilities in California that purchase roundwood as well as facilities that purchase residuals from roundwood users. We also collected data from facilities in surrounding states that purchase roundwood from California. We asked facilities about their mill characteristics, employment, inputs, outputs, residual production and disposition, and sales values. In total, we identified 72 active facilities in California, accounting for an annual harvest in 2021 of more than 1.6 billion board feet (BBF) Scribner. In addition, this report identifies nearly 2.4 BBF Scribner of lumber, 2.1 million bone-dry units of mill residue, and harvest levels by county. We compare the results of this census to previous surveys that were conducted in 2016, 2012, 2006, and 2000.
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 California counties with primary and residual wood products facilities and timber harvest volume by county, 2021. Primary facilities process roundwood (timber), and residual facilities purchase and process wood residuals from primary facilities. MFB = thousand board feet. |