Full and half day workshops will be held on Tuesday, December 2. An additional fee is required for workshops and can be added to your congress registration ($40 for full day, $20 for half day).
To add a workshop during registration: After confirming your registration type, click Select Ticket Options and check the box for the workshop you wish to attend. If you are already registered, please log in to the AFE portal, go to Events, My Event Registrations, Click Withdraw/Modify, Click Select Ticket Options, Make selections and save. View image of this step.
Full Day Workshops, 8:30am to 5:30pm (1 hour lunch break)
Attendees will assess how fuel treatments affect three different outcomes – burn severity, containment, and infrastructure – across a range of landscape conditions. Publicly available and custom-made data products will be leveraged in an R-based workflow to conduct sampling, control matching, and analysis to reveal important relationships that can aid managers in placing and constructing treatments.
Organizers: Andrew Johnson, US Forest Service ORISE Fellow; Caden Chamberlain, Colorado State University; Hannah Van Dusen, Colorado State University; Alexander Arkowitz, Colorado State University; Betsy Black, US Forest Service ORISE Fellow; Jens Stevens, US Forest Service
Description: Land management agencies have adopted a crisis stance towards managing wildfire risk through prevention. Forest fuel treatments are a preventive measure constructed for multiple objectives, including enhanced fire management effectiveness, decreased structure loss, and reduced burn severity. The Wildfire Treatment Outcomes (WTO) project began in 2023 to determine the causal factors of these outcomes through leveraging publicly available spatial data. That same year, the 2023 AFE Fire Congress in Monterey, CA hosted a workshop where the WTO’s initial plans were presented to solicit end-user feedback. Now, we invite attendees to learn about and implement our updated workflow in a module-based and interactive session.
The workshop will begin with an overview of our project’s overarching framework, setting the agenda for the session, and describing how users may leverage our workflow on a landscape of their choosing. Using a small example landscape, we will provide attendees with a pre-processed treatment dataset during our first module. An instructor will describe the treatment extraction, categorization, and rasterization process. Users will then sample treatments and response variables for respective outcomes. Our second module requires users to pair treatment samples with controls using propensity scoring to account for the spatial allocation of treatments, leading to less biased final modeling. Then, in our third module, attendees will leverage an experimental high temporal resolution time of burn raster to derive predictor variables describing treatment and biophysical conditions upstream of a sample point. In our forth module, an instructor will guide users through our variable reduction process, which includes the assessment of multicollinearity and recursive feature elimination with a Random Forest. Finally, in our fifth module, attendees will use machine learning models to assess the ranked importance of remaining variables, produce partial dependence plots, and create surrogate trees to understand the relationships between fuel treatments, landscape conditions, and each of the three outcomes in our example landscape.
We plan to bookend each module with a short presentation and question and answer sessions to solicit feedback that we may use to modify our workflow in the future. Additional instructors will be available to answer questions and troubleshoot any technical difficulties that may arise while attendees implement the workflow.
This workshop will explore the field collection, laboratory, and analyses methods commonly used in tree-ring and fire-scar based fire history studies, seeking to provide a deeper understanding of how fire-scar based research is conducted so related findings can be optimally applied to fire management decisions.
Organizers: Joseph Marschall, Center for Tree-Ring Science, University of Missouri; Michael Stambaugh, Center for Tree-Ring Science, University of Missouri; Jean Huffman, Tall Timbers Research Station
Description: This workshop is intended for fire managers who want to apply historical fire regime and ecological information in their management decisions. We will dig deep into the field collection, laboratory, and analyses methods commonly used in tree-ring and fire-scar based fire history studies, seeking to provide a deeper understanding how fire-scar based research is conducted. Instruction for field sample identification, collection, and preparation, laboratory techniques, tree-ring crossdating, and fire-scar interpretation will be provided. Fire-scar samples from the southeast US will be used as examples and teaching aids, and recent advances in fire history research in the region will be shared. Additionally, broader context of the history of fire in eastern U.S. ecosystems will be discussed. This workshop will be hands-on, with opportunities to view and analyze fire-scar samples from across the eastern US.
Wildland fire is captivating, but public understanding of fire is limited. The FireWorks Program uses hands-on activities to increase students’ understanding of wildland fire. It is designed for students in K-12th grade and consists of curricula and trunks of materials. Participants will learn activities and be able to lead them.
Organizer: Ilana Abrahamson, US Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station
Description: Wildland fire captures the public’s attention every summer, but public understanding of fire is limited. The FireWorks Educational Program uses hands-on activities to increase students’ understanding of wildland fire. It is designed for students in K-12th grade (and fun for adults), and consists of curricula and trunks of materials. Workshop participants will learn several fun activities from the curricula, and be able to teach them to students of all ages. Activities cover combustion, fire spread, fire history, management, fire effects on plants, animals, and ecosystems, and fire use by Native Americans.
This workshop is great for anyone interested in learning hands-on activities about fire science to teach to students or the general public. A tentative agenda includes an overview of the FireWorks program and these activities: Where does heat go? The heat plume from a fire; What makes fire’s burn? The fire triangle; How do wildland fires spread? The matchstick forest model; Bark and soil: Nature’s insulators; Who lives here? Adopting a plant, animal, or fungus; Buried treasures; Fire history; and Carrying fire the Pikunii way. For more information about the FireWorks program please visit: www.frames.gov/fireworks/home
Learn how to make a fine-scale map of original, pre-European fire frequency for any site in the continental US—from a National Park down to a local natural area—for restoring natural frequency and fire habitats for the some 50% of all land species facing extinction from fire deprivation.
Organizer: Cecil Frost, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Description: Participants will learn how to make an accurate map of fire frequency in the virgin landscape, suitable for prescriptions to restore fire habitats in fire-deprived landscapes. Fire is a broad conditioning agent and all species, from plants, birds, other vertebrates; insects and other invertebrates; down to macroscopic and microscopic organisms, have fire relations. No GIS or other computer skills are needed; the required skills, are those of the ecologist, biologist, botanist, entomologist or other naturalist—anyone possessing intimate knowledge of the natural area they wish to map. The purpose is to enable participants to create that layer themselves from multiple data sources, without GIS. Everyone will receive a course manual that will show how to transfer your new layer of original fire frequency to local GIS staff later. For those who can bring (recommended but not required) a topo map, or a GIS map with topography, soils, hydrology and roads, we will work on the first steps, including converting your map into a relative fire frequency map in an afternoon session, or by signing up for consultation at times convenient for you during the conference.
Morning Workshops, 8:30am to 12:30pm
In this interactive, role-play-based workshop, participants will step into the shoes of diverse stakeholders engaged in wildfire risk management—from residents and local fire chiefs to utility reps, conservation NGOs, and firetech startups. Designed for between 5-100 participants, this four-hour session will challenge attendees to collaboratively plan for wildfire resilience using limited resources (game tokens) while navigating competing priorities, regulations, and perspectives. Drum roll… teams will be able to exchange any remaining game tokens for real money or gift cards! Snacks provided.
Note: The workshop has an additional fee of $30, making the total add-on fee $50.
Organizers: Dr. Shefali Lakhina, The FireUp Platform: Careers & Community; Ian Appow, The Upper Willamette Soil & Water Conservation District; Mark Howell, Grounded Truths LLC; Rachelle Wilson, FoxFireWUI
Description: Grounded in FireUp’s Career Pathways Toolkit and Let’s Get Fire Ready Class, the workshop draws on social science findings from Wonder Labs’ Reimagining 2025: Living with Fire Design Challenge. Participants will choose up to three roles and engage in scenario-based decision-making to allocate risk mitigation resources, simulate community outcomes, and explore what it takes to be resilient to wildfires.
This immersive session promises to break down silos, promote empathy across disciplines, and foster a deeper understanding of the trade-offs and collaboration required to protect lives, property, and ecosystems. By the end, participants will walk away with new perspectives on wildfire resilience—and a prize or two, courtesy of workshop sponsors.50
Participants will gain the ability to access, analyze, and apply nationwide wildfire and fuel treatment data, gaining insights into the potential of this comprehensive and accessible geodatabase. Attendees will leave with practical experience and a plan for incorporating the Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG) into workflows for their projects.
Organizers: Aidan Franko, Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes; Aaron Kimple, Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes; Scott Franz, Ecological Restoration Institute; Dana Heusinkveld, New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute; Anson Call, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
Description: Effective landscape-scale wildfire management requires integrating diverse federal and state datasets. This hands-on workshop introduces participants to the ReSHAPE program and its core tool, the Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG)—an open-access resource compiling fuel treatment and wildfire data across all 50 states and 9 territories.
Participants will gain practical experience querying, downloading, and interpreting TWIG data to address their own management and research questions. Guided demonstrations will showcase applications of TWIG for understanding treatment effects and planning mitigation strategies. A hands-on session will follow, allowing attendees to apply TWIG directly to their needs.
The workshop will conclude with breakout discussions on advanced data analysis and using TWIG outputs for decision-making. Participants will leave equipped with skills to integrate TWIG into their workflows and enhance data-driven strategies for evaluating and improving fuel treatment effectiveness.
Learn how to turn aerial LiDAR data into meaningful forest insights using R. This hands-on workshop covers the basics of point clouds, elevation products, tree mapping, and scalable analysis—an accessible entry point to LiDAR for students, researchers, and professionals in natural resources.
Note: Participants must bring a laptop (Windows preferred for compatibility with certain LiDAR tools). Instructions will be sent for installing softward closer to the event.
Organizer: Jeffery Cannon, The Jones Center at Ichauway
Description: LiDAR for Forestry and Natural Resources in R: A Primer is a hands-on, beginner-friendly workshop designed to introduce students, professionals, and researchers to working with LiDAR data in R. Participants will learn to acquire, load, and visualize LiDAR point clouds; create raster products such as canopy height models; and map individual trees and crowns using aerial data. The workshop also explores how to use LiDAR-derived data to ask ecological questions, and introduces techniques for handling large datasets efficiently, including data reduction and parallel processing using the LAScatalog framework. In addition to technical skills, participants will gain insight into how LiDAR fits within broader natural resource workflows, such as forest inventory. By the end of the session, participants will have a foundational workflow they can apply to real-world forest and natural resource applications.
Join COMPASS for a half-day workshop on strategic communication, focusing on strategies for communication challenges in the wildland fire community. Grounded in the latest research on science communication, this workshop is designed to help fire scientists and technical experts build their communication skills and develop messages for their chosen audiences.
Organizers: Bob Crimian, COMPASS Science Communication; Alex Griffith, COMPASS Science Communication
Description: Good communicators are made, not born. Through training, practice, and feedback, everyone can make progress on their personal journeys to becoming more strategic and effective communicators. Grounded in the latest research on science communication and our COMPASS experience working in the wildland fire space, participants will learn new ideas on how to share what they do, what they know – and most importantly, why it matters – in clear, lively terms. Using our signature tool (the Message Box), participants will be introduced to strategies to help them communicate, distill, and connect their most important information they want to share with their given audiences. This workshop will involve hands-on practice, using the Message Box and providing feedback to other participants, and an interactive exercise practicing an elevator pitch. COMPASS will also discuss some lessons learned based on our experiences in the wildland fire space working with experts trying to connect with communities, decision makers, and media.
Allstate continues to work with homeowners to help them harden homes with resources from the fire department and the Forest Stewards Guild. We will explain the inspection process in working with underwriters who are responsible for risk management. We will also present a general explanation of the quoting process using new software for homes. We call it HO-VIP. There will be an opportunity for question and answer at the end.
Organizer: Ned Jacobs, Allstate Insurance
Description: The goal of the insurance inspection subject matter is to help participants understand the purpose and reasoning behind these inspections. We will provide handouts and fire department guides and other resources. Participants will leave with a thorough understanding and be able to explain to others. Many are curious about what is included in the insurance agent quoting process–what the various features, benefits, and limits of liability really mean for the client. We will present from our Allstate computers real quotes fas examples.
Afternoon Workshops, 1:30pm to 5:30pm
The workshop aims to deepen the understanding of vulnerability in wildfire risk reduction strategies and its evolving relationship with resilience. While resilience has gained prominence in policy and practice, vulnerability remains a critical but often overlooked contributor to wildfire consequences.
Organizers: Fantina Tedim, University of Porto, Faculty of Arts and Humanities; Fernando Correia, University of Porto, Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Description: There is a general tendency to neglect the understanding of the concept and drivers of wildfire vulnerability, alongside a lack of long-term planning and investment in integrated fire management, which encompasses prevention, mitigation, preparedness, detection, response, and recovery.
This workshop seeks to explore various ecological and social vulnerability assessment methods and their practical applications for stakeholders. Since effective prevention requires proactive measures that reduce exposure and vulnerability to fire, these discussions will help identify strategies to mitigate or avoid destructive impacts.
Effective wildfire management requires a balanced approach reducing vulnerability and proactive mitigation while enhancing resilience.
By fostering an interactive and collaborative learning environment, the workshop facilitates the exchange of knowledge and experiences, balancing hands-on activities, critical reflection, and meaningful discussions.
The workshop is structured around five key activities:
- Creating an open and collaborative space – Participants introduce themselves, sharing their backgrounds and interests.
- Defining objectives and expected outcomes – Clarifying the purpose and goals of the workshop.
- Mapping vulnerability and resilience experiences – Encouraging participants to visualize and discuss their perspectives and the effectiveness of different vulnerability assessment maps.
- Identifying vulnerability drivers – Categorizing the factors contributing to wildfire vulnerability.
- Brainstorming solutions – Developing strategies to assess and reduce ecological and social vulnerability to wildfires.
Target audience: academics, practitioners, policymakers.
In this free workshop, we seek expert insights on the pillars of fire management collaborations on private lands in the US.
Organizers: Heath Starns, Texas State University; Christopher Serenari, Texas State University
Description: As wildfire suppression spending has grown, there has been increased emphasis placed on inter-organizational collaboration (IOC) to reduce spending. However, there is insufficient guidance on conditions that foster and hinder it. Additionally, approaches to the study of IOC are unsuitable for addressing fire management in regions dominated by private lands because of the emphasis on public lands contexts.
The organizers’ research led to a theoretical framework through which IOC is shaped in states dominated by private lands. This decision workshop will bring together experts from across the nation to provide input into the framework to inform a nationally applicable set of governance principles guiding fire management on private lands. Groups of participants will address framework domains and be tasked with generating solutions to challenges associated with them. Outcomes will include a set of governance principles for improving fire management within the nexus of fire and private lands. Collective institutional fire management in this context should reduce fire suppression spending, lower collaboration and fire risks, and scale up the benefits of prescribed burning.
The workshop’s larger goal is to inform discourse on how fire and conservation organizations might unite to make transformative change and address unprecedented change.
Workshop participants will examine the potential for post-disturbance vegetation transformation and plausible vegetation pathways in landscapes they manage using a just-launched web application that displays current and future climatic conditions and vegetation types and enables generation of customized metrics, visualizations, and maps to support planning.
Note: Each participant will need to bring their own laptop.
Organizers: Kim Davis, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, Rocky Mountain Research Station, USDA Forest Service; Caitlin Littlefield, Conservation Science Partners; Tyler Hoecker, Vibrant Planet
Description: As climate change accelerates, managers are grappling with potential ecosystem transformations, especially after catalyzing disturbances like fire. Projections of vegetation shifts and projection variability can help guide their decision-making. We developed an interactive web application to do so, informed by iterative engagement with managers across western US agencies. We used climate analogs to identify where future climatic conditions exist today, and we mapped vegetation types corresponding to those analogs. For a given location, dissimilarity between current and future vegetation types and agreement among future vegetation types suggest vulnerability to transformation and plausible vegetation pathways, respectively. These metrics, among other data layers and functionalities, are displayed in the web app. We invite managers and planners to this workshop, where we will guide participants in using the web app to generate metrics, visualizations, and maps to support planning, including integration into adaptation frameworks (e.g., Resist-Accept-Direct). Our agenda includes: an interactive presentation, a showcase of 2-3 case studies, a guided exercise for participants to use the web app for a particular area they manage, and a facilitated discussion around lessons-learned. By the end of the workshop, participants will be empowered to use this tool on their own and understand the underlying science.
This workshop will introduce the open source burn severity mapping tool. This tool, a plugin for QGIS, allows a user to process satellite imagery and create burn severity data. Hands on exercises will allow participants to work with the tool and imagery to create their own data.
Note: Attendees should bring a computer with QGIS installed. Instructions will be sent to attendees closer to the event.
Organizers: Kurtis Nelson, US Geological Survey
Description: This workshop will introduce the open source burn severity mapping tool. This tool is developed by the US Geological Survey as a plugin for the QGIS platform and allows a user to process Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite imagery to create burn severity data. The tool is available through the interagency Burn Severity Portal. The workshop will review some basic concepts in remote sensing of post-fire landscapes, how to select and obtain imagery, how to pre-process the images, and how to create and interpret the resultant burn severity data. The methods taught will follow those used by the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity program. Different types of post-fire analyses will be discussed along with their utility for different ecosystems and applications and how they are created. Hands on exercises will allow participants to work with the tool and imagery to create their own custom burn severity data. Participants should bring a computer with a current version of QGIS installed. Further information and additional prerequisites will be provided prior to the workshop.
QUIC-Fire and BurnPro3D are modeling tools that simulate prescribed fire using coupled fire-atmosphere interactions. As planning tools, they help users design, compare, and evaluate burn plans, including complex ignition patterns. This workshop introduces attendees to QUIC-Fire and Burnpro3D, its ecosystem, and includes hands-on, scenario-based training.
Organizers: Daniel Gualtieri, The Ember Alliance; Rod Linn, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Melissa Flocca, San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego; Linda Chappell, The Ember Alliance; Susan Wilder, The Ember Alliance
Description: During this workshop, attendees will become familiar with the technical aspects of QUIC-Fire and BurnPro3D modeling, understand the need for 3-dimensional physics based fire models and their applications, and provide feedback on the Graphic User Interface of these modeling tools. The need for an expanded prescribed fire planning tool kit and the direct application of these tools to decision support for prescribed fire will be discussed and demonstrated. Attendees will learn from QUIC-Fire modelers from Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) and BurnPro 3D subject matter experts to understand the big picture applications of these modeling tools as well as their underlying processes.
The extension model provides an excellent format to conduct outreach and education that addresses wildland fire issues. Following the established Broadening Extension through Student Training (BEST) program developed at Penn State University, this workshop will provide professional development training for anyone interested in conducting outreach in wildland fire related programming.
Organizers: Jesse Kreye, Penn State University; Melissa Kreye, Penn State University; Jennifer Fawcett, North Carolina State University; Leslie Boby, Southern Regional Extension Forestry; Doug Cram, New Mexico State University; Carrie Berger, Oregon State University
Description: The workshop training will provide participants with a brief introduction to the U.S. Extension system and, moreover, a toolkit of practical skills to conduct extension or other educational types of outreach programming. The training will go over methods in extension education, program delivery, as well as impact and evaluation. The program introduces adult learning theory, principles of servant leadership, and inclusive andragogical approaches, all of which prepare participants to teach and lead in diverse community settings. A logic model will be used to show participants how to assess the needs of various stakeholders and use this information to design impactful programs. Instructors are extension professionals from around the U.S. that are part of the National Extension Wildland Fire Initiative (NEWFI). Ultimately, participants emerge from the program better equipped to translate research into public-facing education that creates positive change.
The workshop will include classroom instruction, discussions, and presentations from wildland fire extension professionals showcasing a variety of educational programs that address a range of stakeholder and audience needs (e.g., wildfire preparedness, fire hazard mitigation, prescribed fire application, etc.). The target audience for this workshop is anyone interested in learning how to effectively create and deliver wildland fire programming for educational and outreach goals.