Courses and Workshops
Bring Fire Knowledge to Your Community
From prescribed fire to fire behavior, 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.
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.
St’at’imc Nation: 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 to controlled fire 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.
St’at’imc Nation: S-219 Firing Operations
This course follows the NWCG standard for S-219 Firing Operations, delivered through a BC lens and customized for your crew, agency, or future projects. Whether you're supporting wildfire response, prescribed burning, or fuels treatment work, this course prepares you to plan and implement ignition operations safely and effectively.
Trail: 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 to controlled fire 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.
Trail: S-219 Firing Operations
This course follows the NWCG standard for S-219 Firing Operations, delivered through a BC lens and customized for your crew, agency, or future projects. Whether you're supporting wildfire response, prescribed burning, or fuels treatment work, this course prepares you to plan and implement ignition operations safely and effectively.
Integrated Prescribed Fire Training (2-Week Program)
Integrated Prescribed Fire Training is a 2-week intensive covering fire behaviour, fuel prescriptions, monitoring, and firing operations. Build the foundation for safe, effective burn programs. Contact for pricing.
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.
FMPs for Prescribed Fire. Kelowna June 2026
FMPs for Prescribed Fire Workshop
From Assessment to Application
Fuels Management Prescriptions (FMPs) and other non-burn prescriptoins are key to supporting prescribed fire, and they need to connect well to how fire behaves and how burns are implemented. This course helps bridge that gap and builds competencies for those practicing within this scope.
Over three days, you’ll learn how to write practical, defensible prescriptions that align with ecological goals and operational realities, using BC’s latest provincial template. You’ll gain hands-on experience with layout that is anchored in for logical burn units, fuels, fire behaviour, and monitoring, guided by someone who is an RPF, AFE Wildland Fire Ecologist and practicing certified Burn Boss.
This course is for those who want to sharpen their judgment, expand their fire knowledge, and improve how they practice in prescribed fire. The content has been thoughtfully developed after interviewing 30+ individuals directly involved with non-burn prescriptions and Burn Plan review, from Fire Keepers to funders, Burn Bosses to WRR Specialists.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this three-day course, participants will be able to:
Understand the purpose and scope of a Fuels Management Prescription (FMP) as it supports prescribed fire.
Apply field-based assessment techniques to evaluate stand structure, fuel conditions, and ecological values relevant to fuels treatment and prescribed fire planning.
Use intermediate fire behaviour knowledge to inform prescription design, including treatment layout, timing, and expected fire effects.
Design ecologically informed fuel treatments that are consistent with burn objectives, burn design and long-term ecosystem goals.
Incorporate monitoring and adaptive management principles to ensure prescriptions are defensible, measurable, and outcome-focused.
Develop a complete Fuels Management Prescription using the latest provincial template, aligned with operational feasibility, robust fire behaviour predictions and regulatory expectations.
Course Highlights
Students receive a professional-grade guidebook on completing the 2025 BC Fuel Management Prescription Template, with a fire ecology and prescribed fire lens, but ideal to guide any fuels managemnet program using prescribed fire
Hands-on training in field reconnaissance, fuel assessment, ignition strategy design, and monitoring
Emphasizes scope of practice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and ecological literacy
Aligned with FPBC competencies, BC Wildfire Service documentation, and legislative requirements
Pre-Requisites
This course builds directly on the concepts, terminology, and skills from an intermediate fire behaviour course such as S-390. If you’ve completed S-390, you’ll be ready to dive straight into applying fire behaviour knowledge to real-world Fuel Management Prescriptions for prescribed fire.
Haven’t taken S-390 yet?
Consider enrolling before this workshop. It will give you the confidence to predict, plan, and apply fire behaviour principles in ways that make the FMP process easier, more meaningful, and more effective.
By pairing S-390 with this course, you’ll get the most value from our time together and walk away with skills you can immediately put into practice. We’ll use these concepts to:
Complete intelligent fuel typing (including ground truthing models)
Run site-specific fire behaviour scenarios
Develop meaningful objectives and desired fire effects
Apply the correct terminology around indices and primary outputs
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No. We follow the FMP outline, but the information we will go over can be pulled into Ecosystem Restoration Prescriptions and Plans, Wildfire Prevention Prescriptions and other non-burn prescriptions and plans that support prescribed fire.
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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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$725 CAD per participant.
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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 and support the review of 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
She brings deep technical knowledge, ecological insight, and real-world operational experience and is committed to mentoring the next wave of fire-informed professionals.
Fire Monitoring Workshop. Kelowna June 2026
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.