VIDEO: The Tussock and Spur fires have served as reminders that Arizona still has a ways to go when it comes to fire prevention. These are events that have displaced multiple families in just the last few weeks. They're also examples of what forest restoration could have perhaps prevented.
"We have to do it in Arizona across two and a half million acres alone," Nature Conservancy Forest Ecologist Travis Woolley said. "And we have to do that fast." When it comes to forest management, traditional techniques have involved marking vulnerable trees with paint so that they can later be removed to avoid overcrowding.
That's not just inefficient. It's also costly. "Forestry is a profession that prides itself on doing things the way they've been done in the past," said NAU Ecological Restoration Institute Executive Director Andrew Sanchez Meador. "And with technology, that's not always a good thing."
That's where tablets come in.