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Project ID:

24-3-01-5

Year:

2024

Date Started:

10/01/2024

Date Completed:

Title:

Great Plains Fire Science Exchange

Project Proposal Abstract:

Problem Statement. Decision makers often must face difficult choices and choose among several priorities when making policy and practice decision about wildland fire. Decision making can be complicated by a lack of time or resources needed to find and explore relevant science, and new knowledge can languish in journals where access is difficult. Scientists may lack the time or fail to realize the need for presenting their research results in an easily accessible manner. Land managers, agency staff, and private landowners may struggle to find relevant research they can apply to the lands they manage. Agencies internal policies and practices may not facilitate information sharing broadly across the region. The Great Plains Fire Science Exchange provides a link between the science and management communities by building a network between fire practitioners, researchers, and policy makers that spans university, agency, and landowner boundaries, widely promoting the use of science to address wildland fire challenges and to stimulate new research and management discoveries. Increased science knowledge can improve decision makers ability, public or private, to make the most beneficial choices.
Objectives. 1. Support prescribed burning education and training, leading to wildfire reduction. The science-supported need to manage Great Plains grasslands with prescribed burning continues to create a demand for training and educational materials in a variety of formats, including in-person and virtually. Landowners, ranchers, students, and agencies continually request new science information to improve the effectiveness of their prescribed burning activities.
2. Address region-wide woody encroachment through science dissemination. Woody plant control is the most important fire issue in the Great Plains, affecting control of prescribed burns, wildfire, and grassland persistence. New approaches based on recent research are needed in both policy and on-the-ground application. Application of new social science can benefit communities and increase control effort effectiveness.
3. Connect people and agencies to enhance fire science communication. Through continued and new relationships new science is identified and disseminated in forms that translate into management activity and policy decisions. Deliberate activities to include additional groups and peoples to expand and enhance science knowledge flow throughout the region are needed. Coordination with agencies also allows additional routes for fire science distribution.
4. Identify emerging fire science needs to support prescribed burning and wildfire suppression. Through informal personal conversations, consultation with agencies, discussion at workshops and meetings, and with evaluations and survey, fire science needs are discovered and conveyed to researchers. Additional refinements and research needs are revealed via practitioners as the science is applied.

Benefits. The proposed work of the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange supports conservation of the remaining 40% of North American old-growth grasslands, which provide important ecosystem services including wildlife habitat, biodiversity, carbon storage, water collection and filtration, and suppling food and fiber. Activities and education specifically tailored to tribal fire science needs advance equity and environmental justice. Easing and encouraging information flow improves government agency effectiveness and efficiency. Reduction of woody encroachment reduces wildfire risk and promotes to wildfire-resilient communities. Trainings, workshops, and expanded interactions between researchers, prescribed burn associations, agencies, and private landowners build fire community capacity. Production of publications, videos, website, social media, and other fire science educational materials and communication efforts encourage asynchronous and individual learning.

Principal Investigator:

Carol E. Baldwin

Agency/Organization:

Kansas State University

Branch or Dept:

Department of Agronomy

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Agreements Contact	Paul R. Lowe	Kansas State University	Office of Research & Sponsored Programs
Budget Contact	Paul R. Lowe	Kansas State University	Office of Research & Sponsored Programs