From Dave White, Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief:

On May 15, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln, in the midst of the Civil War, signed into law an act of Congress establishing the United States Department of Agriculture.  Since then, USDA has helped support the tremendous growth and success of American agriculture, drive economic growth, conserve natural resources, and build stronger communities and a stronger nation.

Click here to watch the USDA’s 150th Anniversary video!

Click here to hear the NRCS State Conservationist’s radio interview along with the Directors of Rural Development and the Farm Service Agency!

Please visit the 150^th Anniversary website to find out more about USDA’s history and the year-long celebration. You can also sign-up to receive historical USDA factoids and photos delivered right to your inbox. 

]]> http://www.jeffersonconservationdistrict.org/2012/05/15/happy-150th-anniversary-usda/feed/ 0 http://www.jeffersonconservationdistrict.org/2012/05/11/free-sheet-mulching-workshop/ http://www.jeffersonconservationdistrict.org/2012/05/11/free-sheet-mulching-workshop/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 14:23:37 +0000 Kaitlin Fischer http://www.jeffersonconservationdistrict.org/?p=332 Please click on the flier below for information about Harvest Mountain’s free Sheet Mulching Workshop on May 20th!

This is another useful link to learn more about BARN On Air & Online: http://brianallmerradionetwork.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/04-19-12-inside-the-barn-with-nrcs-co-osmamericorpsvistas-kaitlin-fischer/

Call 720-544-2869 or Email kait.fisch@gmail.com ASAP as we can only accept the first 15 4th-6th graders and first 15 7th&8th graders who sign up!

This is the most recent map from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office showing the fire perimeter and homes confirmed damaged or destroyed: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=215563989566450268982.0004bc2e2a43a753aeec4&msa=0&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=39.486555,-105.238037&spn=0.15898,0.205994&z=11&source=embed

The District’s focus now turns to providing information on post-fire land rehabilitation and erosion protection to landowners and partners. There were substantial debris flows and mass sedimentation into waterways following both the Buffalo Creek (1996) and Hayman (2002) fires. We are interested in helping all affected landowners to prevent these things from happening again. Our contact information can be found at the bottom of this page; please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have been affected by this fire.

Finally, I’ve posted a few images below taken on the evening of Monday, March 26th, the first night of the fire. This was the day that the fire spread from 50 acres to over 3500 acres in a matter of hours. The fire was extremely active on Monday, as the pictures confirm.

Heavy fire activity on the first night of the Lower North Fork Fire.

A close-up of fire activity on the first night of the Lower North Fork Fire.

The fire has not expanded beyond about 4100 acres. Conditions on the perimeter were favorable all day today and firefighters “had a good day,” according to Incident Commander Rich Harvey. Harvey did not update the official containment percentage beyond 15 percent, where it stood yesterday, because of a desire to only publish accurate information, but he did say that the Incident Management Team is comfortable with containment lines dug around the western and northern flanks of the fire. The number should officially rise above 15 percent later today, or tomorrow.

The firefighters are working hard to establish containment line around 100% of the fire before Saturday, when they expect to see an increase in wind speed.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has shrunk the evacuation zone and permitted over 1,000 residents to return home. Around 180 homes continue to be evacuated., closer to and immediately northeast of the fire.

A map of the evacuation zone, fire perimeter and homes confirmed damaged can be found at http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=215563989566450268982.0004bc2e2a43a753aeec4&hl=en&ie=UTF8&t=m&ll=39.466945,-105.198212&spn=0.12722,0.219727&z=12&source=embed

• The fire perimeter is currently 4140 acres. This morning it was at 3790 and has grown slightly throughout the day today. Last night’s estimate of 4500 acres has been discarded due to more accurate measurements.
• The fire is currently 15% contained. crews are focusing on establishing further containment for at least the next 24 hours.
• One woman is still unaccounted for inside the burned area. Her home has been verified as destroyed. A search and rescue team including scent dogs has searched the area around the home and found nothing; teams are now beginning to dig through the rubble of the home for her remains.
• 26 of the 27 homeowners whose homes have been confirmed damaged or destroyed have been notified by Jefferson County and are beginning to be escorted into the fire perimeter for brief inspections of their properties.
• The federal Type 1 Incident Management Team took command of the firefighting as of 10 AM this morning.
• Firefighting conditions are expected to be favorable for the next 24 hours. During this time crews will focus on establishing further containment lines and aggressively suppressing the fire where safe and feasible.

As before, the best source of official information on the Lower North Fork Fire remains jeffcosheriff1.blogspot.com. We will try to post some updates as we become more involved in the post-fire assessment and stabilization process. For the moment, this is a map of the fire perimeter and evacuation area.

http://jeffcosheriff1.blogspot.com/ is the Emergency Updates blog from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, which is posting periodic updates about the fire, including a preliminary estimated fire perimeter.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/weather/2012/03/26/jefferson-county-wildfire-live-blog-north-fork-fire-grows-100-acres/551/ is the Denver post’s live-updating center for information as it arrives.

You can also find instantly updated information in a shorter form, as well as links to longer updates, at #LowerNorthForkFire on Twitter.

Some images from DenverPost.com are shown below.

Denver Post photo of the Lower North Fork Fire, March 26

Denver Post photo of smoke from the Lower North Fork Fire, March 27

Lodgepole pine grows thickly on poor soil and steep slopes, where few other trees can compete.  After a fire opens up the forest floor to sunlight and precipitation, a legion of new lodgepole fill in the gap.  The species is specially adapted to perpetuate this cycle.  In fact, many of the tree’s cones are sealed with resin and will not open to release their seeds unless cooked at temperatures between 113 and 140-degrees F.

Lodgepole Pine Cones, Sealed Shut Until Burned

In such stands, a diversity of age groups is more important and achievable than a diversity of species.  Such diversity, spread like a patchwork quilt across the landscape, helps to make the forest more resilient to disturbances.  Faced with the different qualities of fuel in such a patchwork, a fire will stutter in its movement, never gathering the steam necessary for a truly severe burn.  In this way, the quilted landscape keeps the scope of fire in tune with human values.

Without fire, beetle kill, or effective management that imitates one of the two, lodgepole stands grow as thick, dense, and consistent as dog hair.  Such a forest will carry a wildfire without pause, allowing its intensity to escalate.  As the spread of houses and other flammable buildings into the Front Range wildland is unlikely to stop or reverse, forest management is necessary to prevent their destruction in such uncontrollable blazes.

Tall, Dense, Skinny Trees Fighting for the Light

Thinning of a forest is a popular management technique because it creates a park-like atmosphere within a stand.  In lodgepole, however, it does little to imitate natural disturbance.  Without imitating disturbance, the management does little to regenerate lodgepole (or any other species), which, in turn, does little to frustrate future catastrophic wildfire, create wildlife habitat, or make the forest attractive.

In a stand dominated by lodgepole pine, our preferred management practice creates patch cuts large enough to regenerate the sun-loving tree, creating young stands that accomplish our wildfire and wildlife goals.  In our dialogues with land owners, the size of an effective and acceptable cut usually ranges from one-to-five acres apiece.  Though the owners often hold their breath while we cut, what comes out is often a gasp of pleasant surprise at the views that have opened up.

Now This Rancher Can See the Mountains

Over the next several years, grasses fill in the clearing, attracting wildlife to the open habitat.  Next, the hot sun bakes the lodgepole cones on the dark earth,  melting their resin and releasing seeds.  As a result, the grasses grow over with a new stand of young, vigorous pine.  The youthful pine will lower the intensity of wildfire passing over this area, potentially saving a development nearby.  As well, the young trees cannot host mountain pine beetle and will maintain their patch of green whenever it goes through.  The increased resilience afforded by a diversity of ages will therefore not only make the forest healthier for both trees and wildlife but also more beautiful through human eyes.

A watershed or a drainage basin is all of the land that drains to a single point or a single water feature like a lake or river. You can think of the Front Range landscape as a series of ridges and valleys, and each of those valleys, from ridge-top to ridge-top, is its own watershed. We usually name watersheds by their dominant water feature- so there is a Bear Creek Watershed and a Clear Creek Watershed. Watersheds are also recursive, or nested within each other, so each watershed might contain two or more sub-watersheds, each of which might have several drainages within them, and so on. This means that the Cub Creek and Turkey Creek watersheds are each components or sub-watersheds of the Bear Creek watershed… which is itself a subset of the South Platte River and even the Mississippi River watersheds!

The South Platte River drains the Front Range and flows into the Platte River at North Platte, Nebraska.

Why are we interested in watershed protection?

Put simply, Front Range watersheds provide us with the water we use every day. Every drop of rain and snow that falls on the high country eventually makes its way into a stream draining a particular watershed, which feeds a larger river until it reaches a reservoir or ditch or stock tank that we use for a beneficial purpose. A healthy watershed- one that has healthy, diverse forests and clean, functional waterways- delivers good quality water downstream to users like you. We always say that it’s cheaper to keep the water clean at its source than to treat it once it gets down the hill- and that has been confirmed by major cities including New York and Denver.

What does JCD do to protect Front Range watersheds?

JCD provides technical assistance to landowners and links landowners with federal and state funding to improve the health of their forests and waterways. The sort of projects we pursue aim to reduce sediment loading into streams that supply drinking water, and this includes erosion control, riparian vegetation and forest health projects. Forest health is vital to watershed protection because a forest that dies off, or burns down, isn’t going to hold back sediment that degrades water quality from entering our streams and rivers.

JCD is currently planning a variety of collaborative projects in watersheds that supply Metro Denver with drinking water. If you’d like to learn more, you can contact Brian Devine at brian.devine@co.nacdnet.net or 720-544-2873.