From Ignition to Insight: Soil Heating and Shared Lessons from Denali's Prescribed Pile Burns with Matt Behrens and Sarah Stehn

Alaska Fire Science Consortium

Thursday, February 19 at 2pm ET

This webinar from the Alaska Fire Science Consortium shares key findings from Matt Behrens’ masters thesis research at Denali National Park & Preserve showing that soil heating beneath burn piles is greater in fall than in spring, and that deeper soil organic layers dampen heating and burn depth, shaping below ground soil heating impacts. We’ll connect these heating patterns to measured fire effects on soil and plant-available nutrients, and belowground carbon and nitrogen pools, to clarify what drives variability and what that means for stewardship decisions. Co-presented with Denali Fire Management, we’ll also unpack how this work was co-produced—what made the manager–researcher collaboration successful, the practical lessons learned, and how Alaska’s fire ecology community can build on these success stories.