Monitoring Fuels in Dog Valley

"I’m a big bug girl, so I love just being outdoors and getting to explore forests and meadows and seeing all of the insects and pollinators," said Emily Antunez, a biological science technician with the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

Monitoring crews are working in Dog Valley near Verdi this fall, an area of the forest where fuel treatments are ongoing.

"We’re going to be looking at litter depth, we’re going to be looking at how the trees look, what the shrubs look like, are there seedlings, any tree seedlings and we’re measuring all of that we’re collecting data on what the environment looks like," said Caitlin Murphy, who is heading up today's expedition west of Reno.

They're documenting fuel levels to assess the fire risk.  

"We’re going to be using things like a fuel gauge, which is something that looks at the different sizes of sticks, to put it simply," Murphy said.  "So different sizes of sticks burn at different intervals.  So those smaller sticks are going to create a hotter fire, where the larger ones are going to make a slower fire.  So we want to look at how many of those tiny little sticks are on the ground versus those bigger sticks.  It's important because we want a low-impact fire in this area.   There are a lot of houses in that wildland-urban interface and we don’t want those high-intensity fires that put peoples homes at risk.  So we want to keep those fuel levels low, and we are the people that come out to see what that looks like, to make sure that those fuel treatments are working and that we’re removing those fuels that are going to lead to a high-intensity fire."

All the data collected here is analyzed and shared.

"We have a lot of partners like UNR, " Murphy said.  "We are in close collaboration with the fire department on the forest and we share all of our data with them to make sure this is the right course of action."

And the best part of the job?

"Going outside all the time and being in beautiful wild places in Nevada and California," said Biology Science Technician Dani Canning.

"We all love to be outside," Murphy said.  "We all want to be outside recreating it’s great.  This is my office out here in the forest, it’s an amazing job.  I’m originally from Oregon but I just love it down here in Nevada, I’ve always wanted to work for the Forest Service."