Sonoma Valley Wildlands Collaborative

Our largest and most pressing ecological challenges–such as climate change, fire management, and need for clean air and water–are happening at a pace and scale that demand we work together to solve them. Increasingly, groups across California and the world are coming together to develop innovative partnerships across boundaries to address these challenges at a landscape scale. The Sonoma Valley Wildlands Collaborative is a member of the California Landscape Stewardship Network, which is working to help groups like ours build this new cooperative movement. 

Prescribed burning is the use of fire under predetermined conditions to achieve specific objectives. Objectives could include fuel reduction, invasive species control, rangeland or forest health improvement, or training for firefighters.

Fire is a keystone ecological process, and most of California’s ecosystems have evolved to depend on it as a dynamic process that maintains ecological resiliency.  As a conservative estimate, approximately 4.5 million acres burned annually in California before European arrival; which is on a similar scale as some of the worst wildfire years recently (Stephens et al 2007).  Because of this history of annual burning, smoky skies were typical through most of the summer, and fires were patchy, of mixed severity, and self-limiting in size (Keeley 2002). Many plants and animals are well adapted to, and sometimes depend on, fire to move through their life cycles. 

After nearly 200 years of fire suppression, what we’ve learned is that we cannot stop wildfires from occurring in California. We’ve also learned that our suppression strategies have been part of the problem – paradoxically, by putting out every fire we can, we unintentionally increase the destructive capacity of wildfires when they do occur. What we can and should do is take actions through stewardship to mitigate the effects of wildfire, and to help prevent our communities from being harmed. Native Americans have long understood fire is an integral part of California’s natural processes, which is why they’ve been conducting intentional burns since time immemorial. These burning practices ensured the health of the lands and wildlife that sustained them by regenerating foods and medicines, creating defensible spaces, and making wildfire behavior easier to predict. 

In short, neither thinning practices nor controlled burning alone are as effective as when they are combined.  A nationwide Fire and Fire Surrogates study showed that prescribed fire has unique effects on ecosystems, and most of those effects can’t be achieved without fire. From a fuel management perspective, the most effective treatments are often those that involve mechanical thinning followed by prescribed fire. This is because after thinning, the woody debris doesn’t go away, it’s left on the ground and will burn very hot during wildfire. It is absolutely critical to manage slash (leftover woody debris) to reduce wildfire risk.

Almost all of California’s landscapes have evolved with fire, so fire is an integral part of stewarding them. Prescribed fires return nutrients to the soil, stimulate plant growth and germination, and help sustain the complex mosaic of plant communities that support California’s tremendous biodiversity. Prescribed fires can also remove fuel from the landscape making it safer for people and conduct targeted stewardship of vegetation, including the management of invasive species.

We use the term “prescribed” because these projects follow a prescription. Part of the planning process includes careful evaluation of fuel moisture, humidity, temperature, and wind, and other metrics. The fire proceeds only if the correct prescription can be met. Months, sometimes years, of preparation precede a burn. If, on the day of, metrics are measured and are no longer favorable, the burn is canceled or postponed to a time when the appropriate conditions can be met.

Generally most projects occur during two seasons: early summer, after annual grasses have cured but before conditions are too hot, and later in the fall, in the transition between extreme conditions to rain. But projects could occur at time of the year provided that the conditions are in prescription.

Objectives can include more than just fuel reduction. As an example, yellow star-thistle is an invasive weed that takes over grasslands and can cause injuries to grazing animals. Star-thistle is most vulnerable to fire in June and July, when the seed has grown but not yet matured. Research at Sugarloaf found that 3 years of carefully targeted burning reduced the population by up to 98%. Fall or winter burning would not have the same outcome.¹

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 4,000-5,000 prescribed burns are completed annually by federal land management agencies, with 99.8% of those are successful, meaning they remain contained within the predetermined area. After a prescribed burn, experts remain on site to ensure all flames are extinguished and later assess the efficacy of the burn. In rare circumstances, conditions can change, and the prescribed fire can move outside of the planned project area, resulting in an ‘escape’ or ‘near miss’. Any damage caused by an escape or near miss requires a complete investigation, often resulting in a change of practices to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Smoke can have impacts on air quality. Projects are planned under permits from air districts, and part of that process includes evaluation of weather and atmospheric conditions to minimize impacts to surrounding communities. We look for conditions where the smoke will rise and disperse, rather than sit low in valleys near homes. But conditions can change and smoke can impact our neighbors. Below are some things you can do to reduce your exposure:

• The Watch Duty app now has prescribed burn information. Using Watch Duty will alert you to the possibility of smoke moving in from far away. Smoke from prescribed burning in other parts of the state or the west can have far-reaching effects.
• Know when prescribed fires are happening in your area – outreach is conducted through social media, email newsletters, and press releases.
• Use an air filter at home; wear a mask when outdoors
• Plan ahead to be outside less or decrease your physical activity if local air quality is poor

For anyone who cares about our wild neighbors, this is an understandable concern. California’s wildlife evolved alongside the cycles of wildfire and intentionally-set cultural burns. They are no strangers to the smoke and dangers of fire, but they also rely on periodic fire to regenerate their food resources. We conduct burns on small scales and they move slowly through the landscape – compare this with the speed at which intense wildfires cover a landscape. Given the “slow and low” nature of our prescribed burns, animals can escape the fire. They have a lot of mechanisms to do this: burrowing underground, occupying rodent burrows, or leaving the burn area to seek shelter. Most wildlife make themselves scarce during a fire and re-emerge after the danger has passed. There are even some species that actually follow fire to reap the benefits of the bounty it can yield. 

Good fire, controlled burns, and intentional burns are umbrella terms for fires that are intentionally set and allowed to burn in a managed way to achieve certain goals (fuels reduction, ecosystem health, invasive species control, tending of materials for basketry or textiles, food sovereignty, etc.), and they encompass both prescribed and cultural burning practices. The main difference between cultural burning and prescribed burning is that cultural burns are planned and guided by Indigenous cultural burn practitioners and often include a spiritual component, while prescribed burns are conducted by State-certified Burn Bosses, CAL FIRE, or federally-certified Burn Bosses with the Forest Service. 

Pile burning generally involves lighting carefully arranged piles of downed fuels, often resulting from thinning practices. These burns generally take place during the rainy season. Broadcast burning involves fire applied across a predetermined area ranging in size from an acre or less up to thousands, and generally after an area has not received precipitation for some amount of time to encourage fire movement. These fires often burn low to the ground and are relatively slow moving.

When living in a fire-adapted region, it’s important to ensure your own situational awareness and fire preparedness. Take precautions before an incident to make your home landscape defensible – it really makes a difference. CAL FIRE’s Defensible Space Resources break down how to accomplish this. They also provide you with templates for an emergency action plan that are very useful in preparing for emergencies. The Wildfire Fuel Mapper (a collaborative project between Pepperwood and the UC Cooperative Extension) includes maps, resources, and information to help Sonoma County residents and land managers reduce fire fuel hazard.