LANDFIRE Highlights in Michigan

Randy Swaty poses with the SCA Crew and LANDFIRE staff. © Randy Swaty

Learn more about LANDFIRE in Michigan

LANDFIRE is a wildland fire, ecosystem, and fuel assessment-mapping project designed to generate consistent, comprehensive, landscape-scale maps of vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics for the United States.

Learn more about LANDFIRE and the Fire Learning Network.

UP Forest Ecologist Contributes to Global Project

This past spring, The Nature Conservancy’s Global Fire Initiative (GFI) joined forces with Michigan staff to complete an important component of the 2015 Goal data project. The GFI, along with IUCN (the World Conservation Union) and the University of California Berkeley Center for Fire Research and Outreach, conducted three workshops in the first half of 2006 to validate and refine a global fire dataset needed to inform 2015 Goal planning. As the GFI begun preparations for its workshop in the Neotropical realm, it became clear that they could use some additional help from an ecologist.

Enter Randy Swaty. As Michigan’s forest ecologist, Swaty is involved in the US Fire Learning Network and the LANDFIRE project, but wanted to learn more about fire and conservation issues in other countries, particularly places with a mix of fire-dependent and fire-sensitive ecosystems. By developing relationships with University of Maryland researchers and others through a separate project for the Global Fire Initiative, he helped complete a coarse-scale fire regime classification of South American vegetation types, along with the help of other Michigan staff.

Although he found the project to be extremely rewarding and challenging, Swaty also quickly applied what he learned from the Global Fire Assessment to his work in Michigan. For example, he was able to incorporate some aspects of the global assessment methodology into a new “quick conservation assessment” protocol the Chapter is developing for its portfolio. Michigan staff are in the process of assigning their conservation targets different fire regime types (fire-dependent, -sensitive, and -independent) in order to determine which targets might be lost in the absence of appropriate fire management.

Over the course of the project, Swaty also made connections with world-class fire researchers who, he expects, will help the Michigan team manage conservation sites that are currently threatened by inappropriate fire regimes. The Chapter also has tentative plans to use Swaty to help cultivate donors with an interest in South American conservation issues since he recently spent a week in Chile conducting a three-day workshop.

“The trip helped cement a real two-way relationship with the Conservancy’s South America program to understand the global fire regime from two different, yet similar, landscapes,” Swaty said. “The ‘One Conservancy’ approach works at many different scales, and in this case, will benefit both the state and international programs.”

Student Conservationists Contribute to National LANDFIRE Project

Kevin Koonmen is what Randy Swaty would call “part of a hot-shot group of college kids helping us out.”

Koonmen and four other team members spent this summer working with Swaty, The Nature Conservancy in Michigan’s forest ecologist, as part of the LANDFIRE initiative, a plot-mapping project which will provide scientists with high-resolution data and maps of fire regimes and their degree of alteration across the United States. The students will plot more than 100 vegetation sites in the Two Hearted River Watershed, gathering data on under- and over-story growth by listing plant species, fuel composition (coarse woody debris such as logs and sticks) and tree measurements on property owned by The Nature Conservancy, Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources and The Forestland Group, LLC. This baseline data will help land stewards make better-informed decisions in the future for management of the forest and wetlands.

“We have a big challenge with information on wetlands. This project will help us better understand what’s in this area which will in turn influence our management techniques,” Swaty said. “It’s a really intensive effort that helps us not only in this watershed, but cross-boundaries so others can learn from the data and apply it to other parts of the country, and even the world.”

Using global positioning satellite (GPS) units, the students draw out a big circle around plot points then start identifying every plan within the circumference. If they find an unknown plant, they collect it, press it and give it to a Nature Conservancy scientist for identification. They also record tree diameters and other characteristics related to the forests and wetlands to help determine how much fuel lies within the plot point for fire management and assessment of how much organic material will be available for mushrooms, salamanders and other “log-dwelling” creatures.

All data collected gets entered into a triple-collection GPS unit for uploading into a national database that will ultimately plot the information into a series of maps. Once completed, land managers and others working in the field can use this information now and in the future to study land use trends and give greater detail than past practices such as aerial photography.

With a mission of providing the “next generation of conservation leaders,” SCA involves nearly 3,000 young adult volunteers annually across 425 sites in all 50 states. As many as 60% of SCA alumni become conservation professionals following their service, according to their website [http://www.thesca.org].

“I joined the SCA to gain field data collection experience, build my resume as well as for the adventure this traveling team is going to endure,” Koonmen said.

The 24-year old Flint native joined the Student Conservation Association (SCA) after a series of short-term jobs following his graduation with a bachelor’s degree in sustainable business from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids. After their three-month stint in the UP, the team will hop in a truck donated by Honda and head for Florida to verify vegetation maps.

“We’re very excited to have the SCA on board,” Swaty said. “It’s really invaluable data that would take a tremendous amount of staff time and resources to do otherwise. Working with the SCA has been a great partnership experience.”