PyroLife Symposium - Webinar Summaries

Highlights from the seventh PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 15, 2020 by Isabeau Ottolini. “Wildfires are natural occurrences, but the loss of communities to fire is not”. With this phrase, Lucian Deaton, Program Manager at the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, started the webinar on July 15th. So, how to stop life and property loss to wildfires, and prevent disasters from happening? Many ecosystems depend on wildfires for their survival. But a wildfire can become disastrous for communities when it reaches the wildland-urban interface, and the embers ignite urban structures. If this happens, a wildfire can turn into urban conflagrations […]

Highlights from the PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 22, 2020 by Pooja Pandey. Does fire need policy? For most of the century fire management is associated with suppressing the fire. Sustainably managing the natural resources and fire might be important to the government and the policy makers but still is not the priority for most of the countries. George Boustras looked at different examples of fire policies and offered few perspectives to address this. Management of resources is important because it offers the motive and structure to strategic and skillful planning. The need of the hour is to expand the […]

Highlights from the sixth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 08, 2020 by Rhea Shah. Vanessa Cavanaugh is a member of the Bundjalung and Wonnarua First Nations and a PhD student at Wollongong University, studying the historical, current and aspirational role of aboriginal women in cultural burning practices. She presented at the Pyrolife Symposium contextualizing fire in Australia, sharing histories and experiences of cultural burning practices, distinguishing them from Western prescribed burning. She introduced the audience to the intimate nature of cultural burning  ‘caring for Country’ amongst aboriginal communities in Australia. An introduction to Cavanaugh’s work begins with understanding Country which […]

Highlights from the fifth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 01, 2020 by Carmen Rodriguez and Mariña Fernandez. Fire has been for centuries a modeler of Mediterranean landscapes in southern Europe. Climate change as well as current trends in land use and landscape changes are triggering extreme fire activity, posing new challenges to the region. Paulo Fernandes explains which are these new challenges, and what is the way forward. “We live with fire. But mostly, we live with the worst kind of fire” – started Paulo Fernandes, in reference to Portugal. As a professor and researcher in The University of Trás-os-Montes […]

Highlights from the fifth PyroLife Symposium webinar on July 01, 2020 by Abbey Marcotte and Mariña Fernández. During his presentation, Alexander [Alex] Held drove us through the North Western Europe, particularly Germany, in order to understand how regions that have historically been non-fire prone are facing the new reality of wildfires. Fire in these areas is creating a very complex situation of values that should be considered to understand the current situation and their adaptation to new and evolving fire risks. Considering the fire services, fire personnel are skilled and well-prepared. However, fires have changed and are not stationary anymore […]