Courses and Workshops
Bring Fire Knowledge to Your Community
From prescribed fire to fire behaviour, I deliver hands-on, practical training rooted in real-world experience, right where you need it.
Interested in hosting a course in your area? Let’s make it easy. I take care of the logistics, ordering, and planning, including managing the participant list and coordinating with local partners. Whether you’re a community, agency, or contractor crew, I’ll bring the training to you. Just reach out and we’ll get started.
PAST HOSTS
Cranbrook Fire & Emergency Services
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Williams Lake Fire Dept
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Ktunaxa
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Kelowna Fire Dept
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St'át'imc
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Lil'wat
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Kootenay Boundary Regional Fire Rescue
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BC Wildfire Service
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FNESS
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Cranbrook Fire & Emergency Services • Williams Lake Fire Dept • Ktunaxa • Kelowna Fire Dept • St'át'imc • Lil'wat • Kootenay Boundary Regional Fire Rescue • BC Wildfire Service • FNESS •
Self-Paced Online. RX-310 Introduction to Fire Effects
Learn how fire interacts with ecosystems and how we can monitor, understand, and manage its effects to support resilient landscapes.
Self-Paced Online. S-211 Fire Weather - Prescribed Fire Edition
Online S-211 Fire Weather and Environment - Prescribed Fire Editiion
Self-Paced Online. Ashes to Insights: Fire Ecology in Four Hours
Learn the foundations of fire ecology in under four hours. This fast-paced course covers fire’s role in ecosystems, fire effects, and adaptive management. Perfect for planners, practitioners, pupils and anyone interested in learning the basics of fire ecology.
Kelowna: S-390 Intermediate Fire Behaviour
Whether you're responding to wildfire, planning prescribed burns, or working in fuels management, understanding fire behaviour is essential for making sound decisions and communicating effectively on the ground.
After eight years of delivering this course with BC Wildfire Service, I’ve redesigned S-390 to better support the diverse realities of today’s fire practitioners, from wildfire suppression and controlled burns to fuels management and FireSmart initiatives. This updated version bridges the gap between theory and practice, helping you build confidence in using the Red Book, writing burn prescriptions, and applying fire behaviour principles in real-world scenarios.
This is fire behaviour for professionals, taught by someone who works in fire.
Kelowna: Prescriptions for Prescribed Fire
Write them together. Burn them as intended.
This is the only integrated prescriptions and burn planning workshop I’m running this year.
Prescriptions and burn plans are not independent documents. When they are written in isolation, ecological intent gets lost, burn plans become interpretive, and burn teams are left making field decisions without a clear feedback loop to improve future planning.
This three-day workshop focuses on writing prescriptions and burn plans together as a single planning system, so what is written on paper translates directly into operations on the ground.
Who This Is For This course is designed for practitioners writing or supporting prescriptions and burn plans, including those working in forestry, fuels management, ecosystem restoration, and wildfire risk reduction. It is equally relevant for those starting out and experienced practitioners who want their plans to translate cleanly into implementation without reinterpretation.
What You’ll Walk Away With
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
Write prescriptions and burn plans as an integrated planning system that supports real-time decision-making on burn day
Write prescriptions so burn teams can develop burn plans without requiring reinterpretation or additional professional sign-off
Translate objectives into clear fire behaviour logic, treatment layout, and ignition intent across both documents
Design stratification and plots based on fuels, fire behaviour, and objectives, not just timber layouts
Apply intermediate fire behaviour knowledge to treatment design, burn timing, and ignition strategy
Build monitoring directly into prescriptions so outcomes can be evaluated, defended, and adapted over time
Use time, budget, and field effort more effectively
Produce prescriptions that can be implemented by a Burn Boss without reworking or guesswork
Engage with a panel of experienced practitioners on prescribed fire application, collaboration, and professional obligations
You will leave with a comprehensive manual to guide future prescription development, along with a values-based checklist that can be applied across fuels, ecosystem restoration, Indigenous contexts and municipal projects, all written through a fire lens.
What Makes This Course Different This course is grounded in how prescriptions and burn plans are used, reviewed, and challenged in real programs. The focus is on professional judgment, operational feasibility, and documenting fire behaviour, ecology, and fire effects logic in a way that supports implementation and adaptive management.
The first delivery of this course was filled with consultants actively writing prescriptions. This version builds on that experience, refining how these documents integrate and perform in practice.
Course Format The workshop runs over three days and combines field and classroom learning. Participants work through real-world scenarios, focusing on how objectives, fire behaviour expectations, treatment design, ignition strategy, and monitoring align across both documents. While we use BC provincial templates as the working framework, the course focuses on planning principles, fire behaviour logic, and integration that are applicable across Canada.
Instructor and Panel
Instructor: Colleen Ross, Registered Professional Forester, AFE Certified Wildland Fire Ecologist, and practicing Burn Boss.
The course includes a panel of experienced professionals who will speak to prescribed fire use, working with burn teams and clients, integrating fire into prescriptions, and professional obligations (see agenda).
Details The course is held in Kelowna, British Columbia. The cost is $725 and includes 24 CPD hours plus pre-course preparation. Registration is limited to 24 participants.
Prerequisites / Recommended Experience This course builds directly on intermediate fire behaviour concepts (e.g., S-390). While not required, completing S-390 or equivalent is recommended so fuel typing and fire behaviour assumptions are defensible.
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The learning outcomes and exercises in this course overlap with all prescriptions (FMPs, range plans, ecosystem restoration prescriptions, wildland fire prevention prescriptions). The instructor has experience in a variety of non-burn prescriptions and encourages you to bring what you use.
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This 3-day workshop teaches you how to write fuel management prescriptions that support effective prescribed fire. You’ll learn how to assess fuels, predict fire behaviour, integrate ecological fire effects, and develop prescriptions that align with BC’s 2025 FMP template. It’s practical, field-based, and focused on writing plans that get implemented.
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A certificate will be given to prove your completion so you can put it towards professional development hours and resume.
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Registered Forest Professionals
FireSmart and fuel management planners
Prescribed fire practitioners and burn bosses
Indigenous land stewards
Government, NGO, and consulting staff involved in wildfire mitigation or ecosystem restoration
If you’re involved in writing, reviewing, or implementing fuel treatments, this course is for you.
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This course was designed in response to the Forest Professionals BC (FPBC) scope-of-practice competencies. It helps forest professionals build confidence and competence in planning fire-informed fuel treatments that integrate legal, ecological, and operational requirements. You'll walk away with tools, field experience, and a guidebook tailored to BC’s 2025 FMP template.
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Yes. You’ll get hands-on experience conducting a reconnaissance field visit, assessing fuels, interpreting fire behaviour, and mapping burn units that align with treatment goals. Field days are practical and collaborative.
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3 days of instruction (classroom + field)
A professional guidebook on writing fuels management prescriptions for prescribed fire
Digital and printed course materials
Access to additional fire ecology and monitoring resources
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This course rotates locations throughout BC, typically hosted in communities with active prescribed fire or fuel management programs. Check the course page or contact for upcoming session locations.
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You’ll receive a full packing list upon registration. You’ll need:
Field gear (boots, weather-appropriate layers, safety glasses, etc.)
Survey tools (the instructor has enough for training but more always helps)
Notebook or tablet for field data
A laptop or notebook for in-class exercises
The Field Guide to the Canadian Forest Fire Behavior (FBP) System aka Red Book
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Yes. A tailored version of this course can be delivered for your organization, Nation, or agency. Contact to discuss a custom delivery, including private field sessions using your prescriptions or treatment areas.
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Your instructor, Colleen Ross, is a Wildland Fire Ecologist, Registered Professional Forester (RPF), and Burn Boss with 30 years of hands-on experience in prescribed fire, wildfire operations, and land stewardship. She’s worked across western North America with Indigenous communities, government agencies, and land managers to develop, support and review plans and prescriptions that actually get implemented and burned.
Instructs fire courses including S-390, S-219, RX-310, and S-244
Helped shaped competencies for prescribed fire in BC
Authored operational tools and guides used by practitioners across the province
Designs monitoring frameworks to track long-term fire effects on vegetation, soils, wildlife and fuels
Completed the pilot to this course with excellent reviews and feedback.
She brings deep technical knowledge, ecological insight, and real-world operational experience and is committed to mentoring the next wave of fire-informed professionals.
Kelowna: Fire Effects Monitoring Workshop
Fire effects monitoring is used to examine ecological responses to fire over time and space. It is a critical piece in fire management planning to document the results, measure those results against future treatments, evaluate successes (and failures) and analyze the measurements against ecological, cultural, social and traditional values. Monitoring supports the story you want to share. This course helps you get your monitoring program started as you learn what and how to monitor.
MD of Bighorn, AB: S-390 Intermediate Fire Behaviour
Whether you're responding to wildfire, planning prescribed burns, or working in fuels management, understanding fire behaviour is essential for making sound decisions and communicating effectively on the ground.
After eight years of delivering this course with BC Wildfire Service, I’ve redesigned S-390 to better support the diverse realities of today’s fire practitioners, from wildfire suppression and controlled burns to fuels management and FireSmart initiatives. This updated version bridges the gap between theory and practice, helping you build confidence in using the Red Book, writing burn prescriptions, and applying fire behaviour principles in real-world scenarios.
This is fire behaviour for professionals, taught by someone who works in fire.
MD of Bighorn, AB: S219 Firing Operations
Learn how ignition patterns shape fire behaviour, safety, and fire effects. This S-219 course focuses on the practical skills needed to plan and implement firing operations as part of a prescribed fire burn team or tactical burn out ground operations.