The Role of Fire in the Marsh Ecosystem
7PM Tuesday, February 26, 2013, free talk at the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory, Inc.,222 Clark DrivePanacea FL 32346,
Refreshments served.
Miranda Stuart is a Fire Operations Specialist for the US National Park Service and is currently stationed at the Prescribed Fire Training Center inTallahassee, FL. She began her career as a wildlife biologist in 1995 on theWinema National Forest on the Chiloquin Ranger District (US Forest Service) inOregon on a unit where everyone there stayed involved in fire, both suppression and prescribed fire. While working for the district she attended Oregon StateUniversity where she got her degree in Biology, specializing in genetics in endangered species. Her work for the Forest Service continued as a wildlife biologist but she became interested in the bigger picture of landscape management. After a season as a fire ecologist on the Siuslaw National Forestshe moved to Texas to work for the National Park Service in the Big Thicket National Preserve in Beaumont, TX in 2000. Here she took a position as a fire monitor studying the effects of fire on the landscape and measuring impacts to vegetation, wildlife and the systems as a whole. Shortly after moving to this position she was offered the chance to start a new program for the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and develop their fire ecology program in Texas. Miranda moved to the coast of Texas to start a large fire ecology and monitoring program in 2002 and worked to establish protocols, monitoring techniques and programs along the coast of Texas for the USFWS. Here she burned on an annual basis between 60-120,000 acres a year across the South and Southwest working to restore landscape habitats and studying the effects of fire on these ecosystems. Miranda studied the impacts of the presence and absence of fire on the landscape and mechanisms of landscape management while furthering her skills in wildland fire. She has supported wildland fire operations throughout the Nation including an assignment to Puerto Rico.
In 2009 the US National Park Service (NPS) offered Miranda a position at the National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center (PFTC) here in Tallahassee,FL. This training center serves to provide quality training in prescribed fire skills to students from around the world with the help of valued cooperators from all over the Southeast. The Center has crews for six months of the year that come for three weeks at a time and travel throughout the Southeast working in different fuel types, with different objectives and challenges and learning how to restore habitat and properly manage fire on the landscape. Her role at this Center is to oversee the operations and crews, work with the cooperators, ensure the training needs of students are met and work to train them in the skills they need to be successful fire practitioners. Additionally the Center provides workshops to Resource Managers and Agency Administrators to further educate the non-fire land managers about the importance of a quality prescribed fire program on their land units.
Miranda is recognized by the Federal Agency Certification known as the National Wildfire Coordinating Group in the roles of a Type 2 Burn Boss, Type Three Incident Commander Trainee, Division Supervisor and all lower supporting positions. She complements her experiences in fire and wildlife management with a background in geographic information systems (GIS), ecosystem restoration and landscape management. She is passionate about the role of fire in healthy ecosystems and training individuals to properly manage landscapes using fire as a tool. She is proud to work for the National Park Service and has no plans of leaving Tallahassee. She lives here with two dogs and however many other dogs she is fostering at the time, an old cat, two horses, a donkey and three really mean roosters along with their five hens. Life is short; she plans on living it to the fullest.
Sincerely,
Jack Rudloe, President
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