Fire Learning Network
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Bighorns
Landscape, WY/MT
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Landscape
Information
Networking,
sharing best practices and lessons learned, and
developing multi-scale restoration strategies are
primary objectives of the North American Fire Learning
Network. Field practitioners participating in the
network have produced a variety of management tools
and supplementary information that can be useful to
other land managers working on similar projects or in
similar ecosystems.
To
add information about your landscape contact Chris
Wilson
at christa_wilson@tnc.org or 607-254-8861.
Management
Tools
Desired
Future Landscape Status
Ecological
Models
Maps
Focal
and Participating Landscapes
Arkansas
River Valley Prairie/Oak Ecosystem - AR, U.S.A.
The Arkansas River Valley Prairie/Oak Ecosystem
occupies 92,207 acres in western Arkansas between the
Ozark and the Ouachita Mountains. The landscape
includes a variety of prairie, savanna, glade, oak
woodland, riparian, and bottomland plant communities.
Bighorns
Landscape - WY/MT, U.S.A.
The Bighorn Landscape encompasses over 5 million acres
in north-central Wyoming and south-central Montana.
The fire-adapted systems in the project area include
ponderosa pine, juniper woodlands,
sagebrush-bunchgrass, and shrub wooded draws.
Black
Hills - SD/WY, U.S.A.
The Black Hills landscape occupies more than three
million acres in southwestern South Dakota and
northeastern Wyoming. The project area is dominated by
fire-adapted ponderosa pine communities extending
across a very complex land ownership mosaic.
Central
Wisconsin - WI, U.S.A.
The Central Wisconsin Fire Partnership includes a
working group of land managers addressing fire
management issues on more than one million acreas in
central Wisconsin. Fire management planning focuses on
oak-pine barrens, a globally imperiled ecosystem that
is succeeding to forest due to fire suppression.
Eastern
Absaroka Landscape - WY, U.S.A.
The Eastern Absaroka Landscape encompasses over three
million acres in northwestern Wyoming. Fire-adapted
systems in the project area include subalpine and
mid-elevation conifer forest. Aggressive fire
suppression in the region has changed the composition
and structure of forest and rangeland vegetation and
resulted in excessive fuel loads.
Galiuro
Mountains - AZ, U.S.A.
The Galiuro Mountains encompass 690,000 acres in
southeastern Arizona, and include semi-arid
grasslands, oak savannas, pine-oak woodlands, and
mixed pine-oak forest. Altered fire regimes are a
significant threat in the project area.
Gila
National Forest - NM, U.S.A.
The Gila National Forest encompasses 3.3 million acres
in the Arizona-New Mexico Mountains Ecoregion in
southwestern New Mexico. The project area includes
ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests, pinon-juniper
woodlands, and desert grasslands.
Grand
Bay Savanna - AL, U.S.A.
The Grand Bay Savanna landscape encompasses more than
150,000 acres in southeastern Mississippi and
southwestern Alabama. The project area includes a
variety of estuarine communities grading into
freshwater communities, including rapidly declining
wet pine/cypress savannas.
Gulf
Coastal Plain Ecosystem - FL/AL, U.S.A.
The Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem encompasses more than
910,000 acres in northwest Florida and southern
Alabama. The landscape includes extensive
fire-dependent longleaf pine forest, embedded with
specialized communities such as seepage slopes and
seasonally flooded depression wetlands. Currently, the
longleaf pine system covers less than five percent of
its former range, making it one of the most endangered
landscapes in North America.
Huachuca
Mountains - AZ, U.S.A.
The Huachuca Mountains form a sky island rising 9,466
feet above the San Pedro and Santa Cruz river valleys
in southeastern Arizona. The project area encompasses
300,000 acres and includes grasslands, oak-juniper and
oak woodlands, and ponderosa pine and mixed conifer
forest. Exclusion of fire from these ecosystems over
the past 100 years has led to changes in community
composition and structure and substantial woody fuel
loads.
Jemez
Mountains - NM, U.S.A.
The Jemez Mountains landscape encompasses 1,300 square
miles in northwestern New Mexico. The region's vast
forests, woodlands, and savannas, as well as its human
population, are severely threatened by catastrophic
wildfire due to more than a century of disrupted
natural fire regimes.
Laramie
Foothills - CO, U.S.A.
The Laramie Foothills landscape encompasses more than
67,000 acres in north-central Colorado, and includes
cliff and canyon systems, shale barrens, mixed grass
prairie, shrublands, pinyon-juniper and ponderosa pine
woodlands, and juniper savanna. Altered fire regimes
are a significant threat in the project area.
Lassen
Foothills - CA, U.S.A.
The Lassen Foothills landscape encompasses 900,000
acres in northern California and includes a mosaic of
threatened communities, including wildflower fields,
grasslands, basalt-based vernal pools, blue oak
woodlands, chaparral, and mixed conifer forest.
Large-scale fire plays a significant ecological role
in the project area, but fire regimes have been
altered from historical patterns.
Loess
Hills - IA/MO, U.S.A.
The Loess Hills landscape occupies 650,000 acres in
the Central Tallgrass Prairie Ecoregion in western
Iowa and northwestern Missouri. Fire suppression is a
key threat to the viability of the target grassland
and woodland communities in the project area.
Long
Island Pine Barrens - NY, U.S.A.
The Long Island Pine Barrens project area encompasses
more than 37,000 acres, and includes pine-oak/oak-pine
forests, pitch pine/oak-heath woodlands, and dwarf
pine plains. Fire is the single most important factor
for creating and maintaining these communities.
Malpai
Borderlands - AZ/NM, U.S.A.
The Malpai Borderlands project encompasses over a
million acres in southeastern Arizona, southwestern
New Mexico, and northern Mexico. The landscape ranges
from 4,500 to 8,500 feet in elevation, and includes
desert shrub, ponderosa pine, and Douglas fir
communities. The cornerstone of the management and
restoration plan for the region is the reintroduction
of fire following nearly 100 years of suppression.
Massachusetts
Military Reservation - MA, U.S.A.
The Massachusetts Military Reservation occupies almost
29,000 acres in southeastern Massachusetts,
approximately 50 miles southeast of Boston at the base
of Cape Cod. The project area includes fire-dependent
pitch pine and scrub oak barren communities.
Middle
Niobrara-Nebraska Sandhills - NE, U.S.A.
The Middle Niobrara-Nebraska Sandhills landscape
encompasses over 12 million acres in north-central
Nebraska. Fire-adapted ecosystems in the region
include a variety of grassland, woodland, and wet
meadow communities.
New
Jersey Pine Barrens - NJ, U.S.A.
The 1.2 million-acre New Jersey Pine Barrens landscape
encompasses the largest contiguous pitch pine barrens
community in the world. There is a growing need for
fire management planning in large portions of the
project area where fire exclusion has created wildfire
hazard or overburning has degraded communities and
rare species habitats.
Northern
Cumberlands - TN/KY, U.S.A.
The Northern Cumberlands landscape encompasses
approximately two million acres in northeastern
Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky.
Pine
Nut Mountains - NV, U.S.A.
The Pine Nut Mountains landscape encompasses over
400,000 acres in the Great Basin Ecoregion in
northwestern Nevada. The fire-adapted ecological
systems in the project area include pinyon-juniper
woodland, sagebrush steppe, sagebrush semi-desert,
mountain sagebrush, and low montane shrubland.
San
Francisco Peaks/White Mountains - AZ, U.S.A.
The San Francisco Peaks and White Mountains landscapes
are located in the Arizona-New Mexico Mountains
Ecoregion in north- and west-central Arizona,
respectively. Both sites have seriously altered fire
regimes as a result of cattle grazing and active fire
suppression.
Shawangunk
Ridge - NY/NJ/PA, U.S.A.
The Shawangunk Ridge landscape encompasses
approximately 250,000 acres in southeastern New York,
northern New Jersey, and northeastern Pennsylvania.
Fire-influenced communities in the project area
include oak and pitch pine.
Upper
Deschutes Basin - OR, U.S.A.
The Upper Deschutes Basin occupies over two million
acres in central Oregon in the Columbia Plateau and
East Cascades Ecoregions. The project area encompasses
a complex and volatile wildland-urban interface zone
that has repeatedly experienced catastrophic fires.
Vermejo
Park/Upper Purgatoire - CO, U.S.A.
The Vermejo Park/Upper Purgatoire landscape
encompasses over one million acres in southeastern
Colorado and northeastern New Mexico. The region
includes a variety of fire-adapted and fire-impacted
systems, including aspen forest, juniper savanna, oak
shrubland, montane mixed conifer forest, pinyon
juniper woodland, ponderosa pine woodland, and
spruce-fir forest.
