Fire is a moment. Monitoring tells the whole story.

This is the only Fire Effects Monitoring Workshop I’m running this year.

If you’re implementing burns, writing prescriptions, doing post-fire severity measurements, or reporting on outcomes, this course will change how you approach monitoring. Most programs collect data; few inform decisions. This workshop focuses on designing monitoring that tells you if your burn worked and how to improve the next one.

Who This Is For This course is built for practitioners working in prescribed fire, wildfire risk reduction, wildfire, forestry, and ecosystem restoration. If you are involved in planning, implementing, or evaluating treatments, you will leave with practical tools you can apply immediately. Past participants include staff from FOR, BCWS, First Nations, municipal government and consulting firms.

What You’ll Walk Away With

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Design monitoring that directly ties to prescriptions, burn plans, and objectives

• Set up plots and collect repeatable, defensible field data

• Interpret fire effects across surface fuels, vegetation (ground to crown), soils, and habitat

• Evaluate whether treatment outcomes were actually achieved

• Adjust future burns using fire behaviour and fire effects together

• Apply rapid assessment monitoring when time or capacity is limited

• Ground truth fire severity mapping

• Incorporate design into other plot work; vegetation, silviculture, range, bird point counts, game cams, etc.

You will leave with:

• A complete monitoring framework you can apply immediately

• Field forms, templates, and a FEMO-style reporting structure

• A take-home manual guiding you through building monitoring for your own sites

• Continued access to data collection tools

What Makes This Course Different This is not a generic monitoring course. We connect fire behaviour to fire effects, and those effects to monitoring and future decisions. The focus is on real-world application; how monitoring supports prescriptions, feeds into burn plans, and improves future treatments. This is about collecting the right information and using it.

Course Format The workshop runs over three days and combines field and classroom learning. It is hands-on and grounded in real-world examples, with practical exercises that focus on building and applying monitoring in operational settings rather than theory alone.

Instructor and Guest Speaker

Instructor: Colleen Ross, AFE Fire Ecologist with over 30 years of combined experience in resource management, wildfire operations, prescribed fire, fire behaviour, and fire effects monitoring.

Guest Speaker: Sasha Nasonova, FOR Remote Sensing Specialist, will present on burn severity mapping and remote sensing, including strengths, limitations, and the importance of ground truthing (e.g., CBI).

Details The course is held in the Okanagan, British Columbia. The cost is $725 and includes 24 CPD hours plus pre-course preparation. Registration is limited to 24 participants.

A Note for Employers This course supports defensible monitoring tied to objectives, reporting requirements, and improving treatment effectiveness over time. Participants return with tools they can apply immediately in the field.

• I already do vegetation monitoring for fire. Is this the same thing?

  Not quite. Vegetation monitoring is one important piece of the puzzle, but fire effects monitoring looks at the entire ecosystem response to fire.

  Fire affects plants, changes fuels, soil conditions, vegetation structure, wildlife habitat, and even animal presence and use of the area. Fire effects monitoring examines how fire behaviour translated into those outcomes. Including how much fuel was consumed, what burn severity patterns developed, how the soil and duff layers responded, and how vegetation and wildlife begin to recover over time.

  In this workshop, vegetation monitoring is included, but it’s placed in the larger context of fire ecology and fire behaviour. The goal is to understand what the fire did on the land, and how those outcomes can inform better prescriptions, burn planning, and future land management decisions.

• Is this S-244 FEMO/FOBS?

  No. S-244 is about contributing reliable, timely observations in support of incident management, while the Fire Monitoring Workshop is about building long-term monitoring programs that inform broader land management and prescription development. 

• Why is monitoring included alongside fire planning and prescriptions?

  Monitoring isn't optional, it's foundational to adaptive management. It validates whether fuelling and burn prescriptions achieved their ecological and operational goals, and it informs future actions by tracking trends in vegetation, fuel consumption, fire effects, etc. It’s built into every responsible prescription and burn plan.

• How is monitoring covered in this workshop?

  You'll learn to design monitoring programs using proven system, such as the Fire Monitoring Handbook, FCCS/FNESS Cultural FEMO, and Composite Burn Index, in alignment with your burn unit and objectives.

  The workshop walks you through selecting indicators, sampling design, data collection and analysis, and linking results directly back to prescriptions and burn plans. Time is spent in the classroom and practicing in the field.

• I already write pescriptions that include burning; why do I need deeper training in monitoring?

  Many prescriptions stop at treatment design but omit measurable goals and protocols. That’s a missed opportunity. Training ensures your projects include outcome-based prescriptions with quantifiable objectives and a post-treatment monitoring plan, making your work not just defensible but meaningful.

• Does the monitoring we do here have to follow any standards?

  While you’re encouraged to build custom monitoring protocols, your design should align with accepted frameworks (e.g. National Park Service Fire Monitoring Handbook) to ensure rigor and comparability. We’ll explore how to adapt level‑based standards to meet your ecological, cultural, and community goals.

  I’ve developed a protocol that uses the most popular methods that can be overlaid with other data collection (e.g., fuels, silviculture, wildlife, vegetation).

  These protocols are currently being used by Ministry of Forests (district, BCWS, BCTS), FNESS, BC Parks, and muncipalities and Indigenous communiites I work with.

• How does monitoring feed back into adaptive fire management?

  By systematically evaluating burn outcomes, such as burn severity, fuel reduction, vegetation response, you can refine future prescriptions and burn plans. Over time, monitoring data helps you assess program-level trends, identify successes or gaps, and adjust prescriptions and timing accordingly.

• Will this workshop help me justify prescribed fire to stakeholders?

  Yes. Clear monitoring plans with documented outcomes build credibility with funders, regulators, Indigenous partners, agencies, and the public. Providing evidence of ecological and cultural benefits supports shared stewardship and long‑term acceptance.

• Who has taken this course?

  Hosts have included: Ministry of Forests, BC Wildfire Service, BC Timber Sales, Xwisten, Lil’wat, Ktunaxa, FNESS, CABIN.

  Participants have included: resource professionals, consultants, burn bosses, students, wildlife biologists, ecologists, entomologists, resource managers, wildfire risk reduction speciliast and guardians.

• What makes the instructor qualified?

  Colleen Ross is a Registered Professional Forester and Canada’s first AFE Wildland Fire Ecologist with 30 years of experience. She became certified in fire effects monitoring while working on Yosemite National Park’s Fire Effects Monitoring Crew and has continued to apply those protocols on nearly every prescribed burn she’s involved with. Today, she teaches and adapts these methods across ecosystems, making fire monitoring practical and relevant for burn bosses, foresters, biologists, and fire managers.