Webinar Information
Updated for 2020 to include recent fire restoration projects and research, this seminar provides an overview of the complex landscape design, management, and restoration approach needed in areas prone to wildland fires. Examples will be provided for planning of new construction, maintaining established landscapes, and management for specialized conditions such as heavily wooded areas.
Topics include:
1. Understanding the wildland-urban interface and learn how to identify high risk areas.
2. Examining plant communities to identify what makes them fire prone and examine individual plant characteristics which cause them to be considered high fuel.
3. Examination of how fire can damage constructed landscapes, amenities, and open space and how fire damage can significantly impact the long-term health of large trees.
4. Interpretation of state and local guidelines for fuel modification.
5. Evaluation of existing and planned land development projects to help mitigate fire risk to the community and establish ways to facilitate firefighting response through providing access and fuel modification zones.
6. Establishing fuel modification zones in and existing landscape.
7. How to design, get approval for, and maintain fuel modification zones.
8. Integration fuel modification zones of low-fuel buffer areas into aesthetically pleasing landscape designs.
9. A review of how planned and isolated large developments can unintentionally become their own fire prone landscape.
10. An exploration of the restoration of fire damaged landscapes including insight to the process of evaluating, cataloging, and restoring both constructed and natural landscapes damaged by fire.
11. A review of Case studies from California wildfires which include damaged landscapes and fire ravaged open space including specific physical damage to native and non-native tree varieties and their response to the damage two years following the fire.
Learning Objectives
- Learn to identify, evaluate, and research fire prone areas, and how to design and implement a fuel modification plan.
- Learn how to integrate a fuel modification plan and program into ongoing maintenance.
- Learn how to evaluate, inventory, and plan the re-establishment of landscapes in fire damaged areas.
Greg Zoll
Registered California Landscape
Architect, ISA Certified Arborist
Landscape Dynamics
Greg Zoll is a Licensed Landscape Architect and ISA Certified Arborist with over twenty years of experience in landscape architecture, landscape construction, landscape maintenance management, and water conservation. Greg is a founding partner of the design build company Landscape Dynamics and Urban | Ecosystem | Solutions (UES). The firm continues to pursue an integrated sustainable approach to landscape architecture and construction management. Utilizing tools such as drones and GPS systems, UES implements innovative tools and methods to meet each project's challenges. Greg's understanding of the multiple disciplines and processes involved in complex projects has given him the ability to manage design and construction effectively on projects of varying size such as natural open space projects, large scale land developments, commercial office campuses, public landscapes, community gardens, and parks. His experience with municipal clients includes managing landscape maintenance contracts, assisting in streamlining public works field procedures, providing on-site trouble-shooting with cost effective solutions, as well as completing various scale municipal design and design-install projects.