Spring 2022 OK-First classes for public safety officials are now open for enrollment! We will be offering a mix of in-person and online classes with the online classes being self-paced. Here are the classes we will be offering:
Free training workshops will be offered this fall for both new and experienced users of OK-FIRE, the statewide weather-based decision support system of the Oklahoma Mesonet for wildland fire management, having applications to wildfire, prescribed fire, and smoke. Dr. J. D. Carlson, OK-FIRE program manager and fire meteorologist in OSU's Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, will conduct the training. Workshops will be held in a virtual format over Zoom from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., spanning two consecutive afternoons in October, November, and December:
Over the past number of years, updates have been made to four OSU Extension publications related to prescribed burning and smoke management:
Fall 2021 OK-First classes for public safety officials are now open for enrollment! We will be offering a mix of in-person and online classes with the online classes being self-paced. Here are the classes we will be offering during August-September 2021:
Now that we are in the dormant fire season, our normally most active time for wildfires, I wanted to remind new and old OK-FIRE users that updated training materials for self-paced learning are located in the "Contacts and Learning Tools" section (see left menu) of the website. These updates reflect the new fire danger model that was made public on June 3, 2020. The new fire danger model utilizes new satellite data at higher spatial resolution (500 m) than before (1 km) as well as a revised fuel model map with the same higher resolution (500 m).
We are happy to announce that a new update of OK-FIRE was released on February 3 that provides faster access to output from the fire danger model used in OK-FIRE. As many of you are aware, since we switched to the new fire danger model in June 2020, download times for output from the fire danger model (e.g., Burning Index, 1-hr dead fuel moisture) have been much slower (extremely slow in some cases) than before we switched to the new model. The reason for this is that the data files for the new model have been residing in the "cloud" and not on local servers.
Spring 2021 OK-First classes for public safety officials are now open for enrollment! For just the second time in program history all of our classes will be held online. The classes will be self-paced and open for a specific set of weeks and include:
We are happy to announce that our new higher-resolution fire danger model is now operational on the OK-FIRE website. This model has been developed over the past five years and utilizes different satellite data and a revised fuel model map.
Summer/Fall 2020 OK-First classes for public safety officials are now open for enrollment! For the first time in program history all of our classes will be held online. The classes will be self-paced and open for a specific set of weeks and include:
Spring 2020 OK-First classes are open for enrollment. We are offering 10 classes including 1 Certification class (4 days), 1 Assistant Certification class (2 days), and 8 re-certification classes.