The NMFWRI has compiled its annual Work Plan, and submitted it to the Forest Service. This is required in the federal legislation that created the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes, and details how we will spend our annual appropriation. Our new Work Plan will guide our activities from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026.
For the coming year, our Work Plan features eight themes. Substantive themes
include:
Hank Blackwell,(left) interim director of the Wildfire Resiliency Training Center at Luna Community College, with Dr. Alan Barton, director of the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute at Highlands University during a tour of the heavy equipment simulation lab at LCC. Feb. 3, 2025Theme 1: Community Engagement, Science Communication, & Restoration Education: Projects carried out by the NMFWRI’s Conservation Science Center and collaborators are focused on sharing holistic approaches to natural resources management, partnership cultivation among formal and informal educators, leadership growth and career exploration, reaching audiences spanning K-16 student populations, pre-service and in-service educators, outdoor learning providers and sites, community organizations focused on youth capacity building and college attainment, tribal initiatives in natural resources, and inter-agency cooperative land management efforts.
Theme 2: Geospatial Analysis & Support: NMFWRI’s Geospatial Information System (GIS) program serves as a hub for restoration-focused GIS and provides innovative technological solutions to restoration challenges, providing support to collaborative groups, delivering geospatial technology training for land managers and natural resource professionals, and maintaining and enhancing decision-support.
Theme 3: Monitoring Ecosystem Response & Reducing Barriers to Adaptive Management: NMFWRI’s Monitoring Program maintains a professionally managed field crew to collect data on short- and long-term ecosystem response to restoration treatments and disturbances, providing hands-on training opportunities for students and recent graduates to help build New Mexico’s forestry workforce.
Theme 4: Collaboration & Partnerships: The NMFWRI Collaboration Program seeks to serve place- and project-based collaborative groups and watershed associations in New Mexico as a resource to build and expand collaborative and organizational capacity, promote and coordinate partnerships, foment collaborative capacity in rural communities, and provide support to volunteer groups.
Theme 5: Research Coordination & Communication: Research Associates work across NMFWRI programs to synthesize and share the information generated by the programs, to conduct primary and secondary research to further understanding of the fire-vulnerable human and ecological systems of the Southwest, and to further the NMFWRI’s work with affected entities, through collaborative relationships with land managers and landowners, water systems managers, NGOs, academic researchers at Highland University and other universities, and colleagues at the other SWERIs.
Theme 6: Cross-Program and Cross-SWERI Projects: Theme 6 projects highlight collaborative work across programs at NMFWRI and with our SWERI alliance.
Administrative Themes include:
Theme 7: Communications & Public Information: The Communications & Public Information staff produces and coordinates strategic communications to promote NMFWRI programs, scientific research, and events using traditional and new media tools to help NMFWRI staff and partners bridge traditional knowledge and new scientific research for land managers, agency partners, and the public regarding wildfire mitigation, post-fire restoration, and adaptive management for forest and watershed health.
Theme 8: Professional & Organizational Development: Theme 8 addresses the well-being, safety and professional development of NMFWRI staff, as well as the development of the organization itself.
Last year, NMFWRI added a theme in Research Coordination and Communication to our Work Plan, and we have added another theme this year, Cross-Program and Cross-SWERI Projects. This theme reflects two significant changes in the NMFWRI over the past few years: (1) an increase in our staffing and capacity and greater interest in interdisciplinary projects, and (2) an expansion in our collaborative work with our partners, the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University and the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute at Colorado State University. In addition, in June NMFWRI added a Monitoring and GIS Specialist, a new position aimed at cross-disciplinary work.
Putting these themes into practice, NMFWRI plans to carry out a variety of projects and activities over the coming year, along with our partners in New Mexico. Some of our projects focus on outreach, education and training. Our Conservation Science Center will continue to engage youth and students in programs that increase interest in STEM and forestry careers. Staff also will work with Tribal natural resource professionals on sharing their lessons, practices and experiences with other managers. Our GIS team will provide outreach to help managers utilize the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Post-fire Resource Hub site, our Monitoring team will train partners in analyzing monitoring data and translating that into improved practices, and our Collaboration team will initiate a series of trainings in collaborative facilitation along with our partners at Southwest Decision Resources.
Other projects create decision-support tools to help managers better understand conditions to make more informed management choices. Our GIS team will continue to improve our New Mexico Fire Viewer, widely used to track fires and to keep community members updated about nearby fires. This Fall, the GIS team will roll out the national database of vegetation treatments and wildfires, after testing this product with users over the past year. And our Collaboration team will debut a Hub site that collaborative groups and networks can use for information sharing.
Some projects will focus on creating informational resources to inform managers and the public about forest and watershed restoration. NMFWRI researchers will continue to produce professional publications and present their research at academic and practitioner conferences. Our Monitoring team will continue to manage and improve their data repository to collect all monitoring data produced by entities around the state, and making these data available to researchers and managers. And our Public Information Specialist will continue to promote the work of NMFWRI programs to foster fire-adapted forests and communities through multimedia products, networking, and managing informational resources at public events.
An exciting cross-program project that the NMFWRI’s Conservation Science Center and Ecological Monitoring teams have been putting together is the Fire-Informed Restoration Education for New Mexico (FIRENM), which will work with a wide range of entities around the state to build cultural support for resilient landscapes, acceptance of fire-adapted behaviors, and investment in preserving and enhancing rural environments.
For more information or to follow the work of the NMFWRI throughout the year, check out our web resources:
