Evaluating fire effects, ecological outcomes, and treatment success.
How do you know whether a prescribed fire, fuel treatment, or restoration project achieved its objectives?
And how do you use what you learn to improve the next treatment?
Fire effects monitoring connects resource management objectives, fire behaviour, ecological response, and future management decisions. Without meaningful monitoring, we may know what treatment was completed, but not whether it produced the intended outcomes.
This three-day workshop teaches practitioners how to design and implement practical monitoring programs that answer real management questions.
Whether you work in prescribed fire, wildfire risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, cultural burning, forestry, wildlife habitat, parks, or community wildfire resilience, you'll learn how to collect, interpret, and apply monitoring information to evaluate treatment effectiveness.
Who This Workshop Is For
Designed for practitioners involved in planning, implementing, monitoring, or evaluating fire and fire treatments. Past participants have represented BC Wildfire Service, the Ministry of Forests, First Nations, municipal governments, consulting firms, community forests, fire departments, academic institutions, parks agencies, and ecosystem restoration programs.
What You'll Learn
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
Develop a monitoring plan using your own project or a provided scenario.
Connect monitoring questions to resource objectives, burn objectives, and desired fire effects.
Select appropriate monitoring approaches, from rapid assessments to detailed plots.
Establish plots and collect consistent, repeatable field data.
Apply the Composite Burn Index and Fire Monitoring Handbook approaches to evaluating burn severity.
Assess first-order effects, including surface fuel consumption, crown scorch, soil heating, and burn severity.
Identify second-order effects, including delayed tree mortality, vegetation recovery, invasive species response, wildlife habitat change, and future fuel conditions.
Interpret observed fire effects in relation to fuels, fire behaviour, weather, and site conditions.
Integrate fire effects monitoring into existing vegetation, forestry, wildlife, fuels, and restoration programs.
Use monitoring results to evaluate objectives, inform reporting, and improve future management actions.
You will leave with a working monitoring plan developed throughout the workshop, supported by field experience, practical templates, and feedback from fellow practitioners.
Included Resources
Comprehensive workshop manual
Monitoring plan templates and field forms
Rapid assessment and detailed monitoring protocols
Burn severity and fire effects interpretation tools
Example monitoring plans and reporting formats
Ongoing access to workshop resources and data collection tools
What Makes This Workshop Different
This is not a generic monitoring course, nor is it equivalent to S-244 Field Observer and Fire Effects Monitor training.
Rather than simply teaching data collection methods, this workshop focuses on choosing the right monitoring approach for the questions being asked.
Participants explore how fire behaviour, fuels, weather, ignition, and site conditions influence ecological outcomes, and how monitoring can support professional judgment, operational planning, and adaptive management.
The emphasis is on collecting information that can be used to make decisions, not collecting data for its own sake.
Course Format
Three days of minimal classroom learning, extensive field practice, and applied monitoring plan development. Participants may bring a current or upcoming project or use a provided workshop scenario. Field sites are shared practice areas where participants compare methods, develop field skills, and apply their observations to their own monitoring plans.
Day 1: Monitoring Foundations and Rapid Assessment
Introduction to monitoring objectives, first-order and second-order fire effects, monitoring questions, and variable selection. The afternoon field session introduces rapid assessment and the Composite Burn Index, including comparisons between assessors and discussion of the strengths and limitations of different approaches.
Day 2: Detailed Monitoring Plots
Following classroom preparation, participants establish and measure detailed monitoring plots in the field. Methods include surface fuels, litter and duff, vegetation, tree condition, repeat photography, wildlife sweeps and other variables selected to address monitoring objectives. Participants assess the practicality and repeatability of different protocols and refine their monitoring plans.
Day 3: Post-Fire Effects and Monitoring Plans
The morning field session examines post-fire conditions, including burn severity, fuel consumption, vegetation effects, tree response, and substrate changes. Participants discuss how observed effects relate to fire behaviour, fuels, weather, ignition, and site conditions, while distinguishing immediate observations from ecological responses requiring longer-term monitoring. During the afternoon, participants complete and present their monitoring plans for discussion and feedback.
Instructor
Colleen Ross, RPF, BIT, AFE Certified Wildland Fire Ecologist
Colleen brings nearly three decades of experience in wildland fire and resource management, supported by a Master in Fire Ecology. She has field experience with fire effects monitoring starting going back 26 years and prescribed fire operations. She holds certifications as a Fire Effects Monitor, Fire Behaviour Analyst, and Burn Boss. Her work focuses on integrating fire ecology, fire behaviour, monitoring, and operational implementation into practical, defensible fire management programs.
Previous workshops have also featured guest presentations on cultural fire monitoring and remote sensing applications.
Registration and Course Details
Early Registration: The 2026 price at $745 CAD
Register by March 1, 2027.
Regular Registration: $795 CAD
Effective March 2, 2027.
Professional Development: 24 CPD hours plus pre-course preparation
Registration Limit: 21 participants
Registration includes field instruction, workshop materials, and a comprehensive monitoring manual.
A Note for Employers
This workshop provides immediate value to organizations responsible for evaluating prescribed fire, wildfire risk reduction, ecosystem restoration, and fuel treatment outcomes. Participants return with a working monitoring plan, field-tested methods, and practical resources that can be incorporated into existing monitoring and reporting programs. The training supports more defensible evaluations, clearer reporting of treatment effectiveness, and informed decisions about future management actions.
2026 Participant Feedback
Participant feedback helped shape the 2027 content, exercises, field activities, and resources. Fire effects and treatment monitoring can look very different depending on the ecosystem, treatment objectives, values, and questions being asked. The diversity of experience in the room added considerably to the learning and reinforced that there is no single monitoring approach that fits every project.
Overall, participants described the workshop as:
Practical, engaging, and applicable to their work.
A strong balance of classroom learning and field application.
Enhanced by guest speakers, different perspectives, and local knowledge.
A valuable opportunity to learn alongside practitioners from different backgrounds and build professional networks.
Well structured, with accessible field sites and practical exercises.
Useful for understanding the range of tools and approaches available for monitoring fire effects and treatment outcomes.
Feedback that helped improved the content in 2027 included more pre- and post-burn visual examples across different fuel types, more plot-design diagrams and examples of completed field forms, more time interpreting fire effects in the field, and opportunities for participants to apply monitoring concepts to their own projects.
The goal is not to teach one monitoring protocol, but to give practitioners the tools to ask good questions, select methods that fit those questions, and use what they learn to improve the next treatment or burn.