Fire Danger... High!

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Fire Danger... High!

Clear sunny summer days were replaced with a smoky haze. Drought. High fire danger. Burning bans. All of these were characteristics many people experienced over the past few months. While we normally think of spring as the most critical time for wildfires in Wisconsin, they can happen during summer and fall as well, due to seasonal drought and fallen dry, dead leaves. While the hazy skies didn’t result from local wildfires, in 2023 already there have been 924 wildfires that burned 4,390 acres in Wisconsin.

Photo courtesy of Gretchen Marshall

Thinking of what conditions summer brought to much of the state, how can we help students understand the importance of preparing for fall and keeping their families and property safe from wildfires?

Sustainable forest management, including prescribed burning, has taken great strides toward reducing the dangers of wildfires in our state. Still, as people move from city centers to the edge of town, you may hear more about the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). This is the area where homes and communities are expanding and are adjacent to undeveloped, vegetative, or forested land. It is an area where wildfire poses a great risk to people. Use the DNR’s Planning webpage to determine if your school is located in an identified community at risk. Teach students how to assess and prepare their home in the event of a wildfire. The DNR’s Fire Management website has additional resources to learn about ways to reduce fire danger around the school, their homes, and the community.

Find Resources in the High School Forestry Scope & Sequence

LEAF’s curated collection of resources from teachers can help you plan a forestry unit or course, but it can also serve as a go-to source for supplementing your existing curriculum with PowerPoints, lessons, and other ideas related to almost any forestry topic. Check out the “Fire” topic (Unit 7 in the Scope & Sequence) to find even more ideas for teaching about fire behavior, fire ecology, and wildfire management.

View the Scope & Sequence

The Wisconsin DNR has a vast number of resources that are valuable to your classroom and students. Allow students to explore their Fire Management Dashboard. This is a great tool to give students practice with data literacy in a real-world context. You can filter the map data by time frame to look at current and past fire locations. The dashboard also shows the specific cause of each wildfire on the map. Do you have students interested in becoming wildland firefighters? Take a look at the Wildland Firefighter career information from the DNR. For a hands-on look at the equipment professional wildland firefighters use in the field, check out LEAF's Wildland Fire Kit, available to use for free as part of the WCEE's lendable kits program.

And remember what Smokey Bear says... Only You Can Prevent Wildfires!

Join us at the MEEC!

LEAF and KEEP staff and partners will present a number of sessions at the Midwest Environmental Education Conference (MEEC) in La Crosse, November 2nd – 4th. Registration deadline is October 4th.

Highlights include:

Climate Change: Development of a Statewide Infrastructure - Gina Smith, Samara Hamzé and Victoria Rydberg-Nania
Growing Where You Are Planted: Place-Based Learning with Trees - Jonathan Ismail and Olivia Witthun
Nature Poetry is For Everyone! - Nicole Filizetti
Tree Inventories to Connect with Community Forests - Jonathan Ismail and Dan Buckler
Trees Tie Us to The Land: Using PLT to Foster Connections - Nicole Filizetti, Michelle Ramos and Chip Murrow

A full schedule and other details about this great conference, including the opportunity for scholarships that reduce the cost of attendance, can be found online.

We hope to see you there!

Conference info

Professional Development: Featured Workshop

Step Outside Into Learning

When: 9 :00 am - 3:00 pm, Thursday, October 5th

Where: Havenwoods in Milwaukee

Cost: $40 (participants must bring a bag lunch)

Harness the benefits of the most interactive instruction possible: learning on school grounds, outside the four walls of the classroom. This workshop is designed for K-8 teachers who are new to conducting class outside and are looking to boost their skills with beginning level resources. Participants will become comfortable with conducting class outside on any type of school grounds (from urban concrete to rural forests) to engage and inspire students in learning. Guidelines, rules, safety considerations, ready-to-use resources and handouts will be provided so teachers have everything they need to lead confidently. This workshop will provide an introduction to the LEAF K-12 Forestry Education Curriculum and Project Learning Tree’s award-winning Explore Your Environment lesson guide.

Substitute reimbursements of up to $125 are available. Contact leaf@uwsp.edu for more information.

Looking ahead: National Forest Products Week!

Help us celebrate Wisconsin forest products October 15-22, 2023!

Looking for a fun classroom activity and a way to help LEAF recognize National Forest Products Week?

Forest Products Week in Wisconsin celebrates the people who work in and care for our forests, the businesses that create forest products and the many ways forest products contribute to our lives.

Have your students come up with a riddle for a Wisconsin forest product. Send it to us and we will feature it on our social media during October 15-22 and tag your school!

Example:

I am something you use every day,

But you rarely think about me in any way.

I am very soft, yet very strong,

And I come in a roll that's very long.

What am I?

Answer:

Toilet Paper!

Send your riddle!

Need ideas? Use LEAF's Forest Products Checklist from our Track That Product lesson (a part of our Forest Products Kit).

Have a little extra time? Consider using Lesson 4: Forests Are Important to Me! from LEAF's Forestry Lesson Guide 2-3 Unit where students explore and graph their personal forest values and use a checklist to discover how many of the forest products they use are made right here in Wisconsin. (include the link to the lesson).

Have questions or need additional resources? Contact us at leaf@uwsp.edu. We are here to support educators and students with forestry opportunities.

Workshops

Kits

Curriculum

Published for September 2023