1. Cultural Resources and Burn Plans
5/7/2018
Cultural Resources and Burn Plans
Today I’d like to provide you with an overview of cultural resource objectives for incorporation into burn plans.
I look forward to working with you over the next several years.
As the archeologist for the fire program, I will be available to help meet these objectives.
Jun Kinoshita, Fire Archeologist
Yosemite National Park

2. 5/7/2018
Working Together
Including a Cultural Resource advisor in the burn planning process can help to achieve these objectives
Our involvement will be plan-dependent
A balanced, flexible approach
These are general for known sites
Operational flexibility
We hope that by involving me early in this process, we can prevent having to change those burn plans later.
For example a cooler burn on a site may be all that is necessary to protect that site.
Our involvement will vary by park area, and be plan-dependent, with differing levels of operational involvement at each stage of the burn planning and implementation.
Delineating boundary lines
Providing general information about the types of resources.
Develop objectives based on known or expected resources.
These objectives are general for known sites- we expect to discover previously unknown sites in the process and thus need some operational flexibility from the burn plan and the burn crews. In exchange, we are looking for a balanced, flexible approach-not 100% inventory coverage. We need to know what kind of cultural resources to expect through our background work.

3. Objectives for all Resources:
5/7/2018
Objectives for all Resources:
Protect resources from ground disturbance
Reduce direct fire impacts
Heat
C14, magnetic contamination
Reduce indirect impacts
Erosion
Collapsing snags
Handlines
Heat will crack and melt resources, the magnetic properties may be altered and protein residues that we use for analysis may be destroyed.
Having a drainage cut through a site after a burn will destroy it.
Collapsing snags may break artifacts while the root ball may upturn and thus destroy a site.

4. Objectives for Archeological Resources:
5/7/2018
Objectives for Archeological Resources:
Reduce fuels next to or near sensitive resources
Maintain fuel loads that will not create intense artifact-altering fires
These include pictographs and bedrock mortars.

5. Objectives for Historic Structures:
5/7/2018
Objectives for Historic Structures:
Reduce fuels adjacent to structures (maintain defensible space)
Restore and maintain historic landscapes
Assess and upgrade structural fire protection facilities and response plans
Older structures tend to be drier and more vulnerable to fire.
This last one is very important and yet is easy to overlook.

6. Objectives for Traditional Cultural Places:
5/7/2018
Objectives for Traditional Cultural Places:
Maintain traditional landscape characteristics at ceremonial, spiritual and historic places
Where fire is a traditional management tool, incorporate traditional burning methods and use native people to conduct burns
Traditionally gathered plant
Vegetation patterning
Openness
View-shed
Meadow example

7. Information that Cultural Resources needs in a Burn Plan:
5/7/2018
Information that Cultural Resources needs in a Burn Plan:
Who will be conducting the burn?
What kind of fire effects can we expect?
Where will the burn take place?
When will the burn take place?
How can we achieve our objectives?
Who will be conducting the burn? This includes the POC and how many crews will be involved.
What will take place? What type of burn is this? What type of disturbance do we expect to see? (staging camp, hand line, etc.) What kind of intensity do we expect to see?
Where will the burn take place? How definite (precise) are the area boundaries? Can we define burn area boundaries based on logical resource-based criteria? Can we reduce fuel loads on complete sites in cases where burn area boundaries bisect sites?
When will the burn take place? This will have to do with your priority areas. CR may have requests for a burn to protect a particular resource.
How will the burn take place? This includes the operational aspect of the plan. For example, we may want to see manual fuel reduction near sites or avoidance when using handlines. How will the fire be contained?

8. Cultural Resources will Provide:
5/7/2018
Cultural Resources will Provide:
Timely information about existing sites in the area
Our best estimate about how many sites we expect to find
Our best suggestions for avoiding or mitigating known sites so that you can do your job