RESEARCH FOCUS
In the Landscape Ecology and Fire Lab, we are focused on three major themes within the broader discipline of fire ecology and related fields of landscape ecology, natural resources management, and geography. These include:
1)  Developing the next generation of diverse fire ecologists and managers, capable of leveraging the fire data science revolution. A primary function of this lab is to train diverse individuals at multiple levels to tackle contemporary problems in fire ecology and management.
2) Exploring the challenges and opportunities that arise from landscape diversity and system dynamics. By landscape diversity, we mean the diversity of fire regimes, life forms, and land tenure at landscape scales (patch-to-regional scales). When we say dynamics, we mean the way that patterns of landscape diversity have changed and are expected to continue to change. 
3) Examining socio-ecological effects of fires. We tend to focus especially on the ecological relationships between fire and plants, but this often leads us into studies of the resilience of ecological and social communities, including wildlife habitat, state change, fuels management, invasive species, and much more. Some tools we commonly use to this end include remote sensing & GIS, fire behavior modeling, tree ring analysis, ecoacoustics, prescribed fire, and field-based data collection. Our place-based research has traditionally had a regional focus on the western US and Hawaii, but we like to think about how the work we do fits into the discipline beyond these locations. 

CURRENT PROJECTS