Forest Restoration Triangle Lessons on Fire Ecology and Management
Overview
Fire is one of the most powerful transformative natural forces on earth. Humans have harnessed fire as a force to fundamentally shape landscapes for millennia, promoting it at times and suppressing it at others. The FORT CREST forest fire curriculum engages students to learn about how fire impacts Southwestern landscapes. The curriculum was designed by FORT CREST students and faculty. It is intended for middle school (grades 6-8) students but can be tailored to other grade levels as well. These lessons feature active learning through hands-on activities to teach about the ecological role of fire in the function and structure of forests, the physics of fire behavior, how humans have and continue to manage fires in forested ecosystems, and how fire-impacted landscapes can be restored. They also apply place-based learning strategies to center learning around students’ experiences with wildfires. While many of the illustrative examples are taken from northern New Mexico, where the FORT CREST Center is located, the principles can be applied throughout the southwestern United States. We also foreground culturally-responsive pedagogical strategies to reflect the diverse populations who have lived in and shaped these landscapes for centuries. In addition to the core environmental science principles expressed in these lessons to correspond with NextGen Science Standards, students will also learn about physics, chemical reactions, and history. Although the components of this module were developed to build upon one another and be implemented in sequence, they can also serve as stand-alone lessons. All the materials are either open access or acquired under a creative commons license. Please provide us with feedback via email as you implement these lessons. We hope they are informative, inspiring, and fun!
In this lesson, we explore how fire shapes the structure and function of forest ecosystems in the southwestern United States. We also consider how fire influences the air, water, soil, and living things we rely on. Students will perform an experiment to determine how fire can impact soils, as well as study tree rings and analyze graphs to understand how fire has changed over time.
In this lesson, we will learn about different actions we can take to help forest ecosystems recover after damaging fires. Students will understand that human actions can be both harmful and beneficial to ecosystems. They will also be empowered to participate in restoration projects themselves.
In this lesson, we will learn how we can learn to co-exist with fires that threaten human communities. This lesson discusses recommended management actions in different fire zones around properties and precautions we should take depending on the ready-set-go evacuation status. Students will identify potential dangers on various properties and develop their own wildfire preparedness plan.