Fire Ecology Portal

The Lake States Fire Science Consortium (LSFSC) is committed to ensuring that the ‘best available science’ is available for planning and managing northern fire-dependent ecosystems of the Lake States. Where there are current gaps in the science, the goal of the LSFSC is to assist in filling those gaps so that science informs practice and vice-versa. Unfortunately, for many local fire management issues, there are few resources available to bring managers and scientists together to solve these important issues.

In an effort to enhance the opportunities for managers and scientists to work together, and to expose future professionals to opportunities of management and research collaborations, the LSFSC requests proposals to fund research internships that address relevant fire science and management issues associated with northern fire-dependent ecosystems of the Lake States region (See our Ecosystems page for a description of fire-dependent ecosystems that are the focus of the Lake States Fire Science Consortium). Proposals must be developed by joint manager-scientist teams (i.e. both must be listed as co-PIs and equally contribute to proposal development) and outline how the research internship will address a critical need that will help improve management of fire-dependent ecosystems locally. Preference will be given to partnerships that have not yet received funding from the program.

The LSFSC anticipates awarding several $4,000 research internship awards. It is expected that 100% of the funds should go to support the undergraduate internship experience (preferably for salary, though a limited amount of funds may be used to purchase materials and supplies needed to complete the project - funds should not be used as a supplement or summer salary for graduate students). All proposals must be submitted by 5:00 PM Eastern / 4:00 PM Central on Monday, December 9, 2019 by email to Jack McGowan-Stinski. There will be no exceptions to this closing date and time.

Project: The University of Vermont, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources is seeking a PhD-level graduate student to participate in research examining the effectiveness of restoration, adaptation, and transition management techniques at fostering forest health and productivity in the face of novel climate, insect, and disease threats. This research will assess silvicultural experiments co-developed with stakeholder input with application to both urban and rural forest settings. The student will join a team of collaborators from the University of Vermont, U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station, and Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center in developing management options to promote diverse and productive rural and urban forests despite the stress of climate change and other disturbance agents. The position is available for Summer/Fall 2020 and includes four guaranteed years of funding (stipend, tuition waiver, and health insurance).

Qualifications: M.S. in forest ecology, forestry, silviculture, biology or a closely related field.  Applicants should be able to work independently, but also cooperatively with other researchers and managers on the larger project. Applicants should also have a strong work ethic, demonstrated writing and quantitative capabilities, and a record of leadership.

Application: Interested applicants should supply all application materials to the UVM Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources (RSENR) Program (PhD in Natural Resources) by February 1, 2020 – when applying, please state your interest in this position in the “Statement of Purpose.”

Climate change is occurring more rapidly in the Arctic than any region on Earth. Its impacts are being felt by Indigenous peoples as well as throughout a range of societal sectors, including wildfire management. Recent scholarship suggests that boundary spanning, translational ecology, and the process of knowledge co-production are effective in bridging the gap between science and decision-making and calls for building capacity by developing processes for effective evaluation and for training boundary spanning professionals.

We seek a post-doctoral research fellow to explore one or more of these inter-related research areas of knowledge co-production and boundary spanning assessment related to climate change in Alaska.

• Actions, processes, and mechanisms for use-inspired science.
• Metrics of success in knowledge co-production.
• Scientist and practitioner training in knowledge co-production and boundary spanning.

Requirements: experience and/or demonstrated capacity to contribute in one or more of the following topical areas:

• Indigenous evaluation, indigenous knowledge, cross-cultural communication
• Climate change science, application, communication, and knowledge co-production
• Wildfire science and boundary spanning
• Mixed-subsistence economies and community development

The post-doctoral research fellow will work closely in an interdisciplinary team environment that includes senior scientists, junior scientists, graduate students, and research professionals. Collaborating organizations include the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (a NOAA Regional Integrated Science and Assessment team), the Alaska Fire Science Consortium (a member of the Joint Fire Science Program Fire Science Exchange Network), and the USDA Pacific Northwest Climate Hub.

• Desired start date: September 2019
• Duration: 2 year, term funded
• Location: International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Open until filled.  

How to apply: please submit CV, contact information for three references, and a cover letter to Sarah Trainor, ACCAP Director with “Post-Doc Application” in the subject line.  The cover letter should include:

• A description of the candidate’s PhD research;
• A discussion of the candidate’s research interests and experience relevant to one or more of the numbered research areas listed above;
• A discussion of the candidate’s research interests and experience relevant to one or more of the bulleted topical areas listed above;
• A brief proposed plan for investigating one or more of the research areas listed above. This should include the data collection and analysis methods with which you are experienced and familiar as well as possible additional methods you have an interest in learning.

We are looking for a capable student to join our Forest Ecology research team at the Masters or PhD level.  The student will use radio-labeling methods to explore seed dispersal and the spatial ecology of herbaceous species across a range of scales.  Demographic models will be paired with micro-environmental heterogeneity to compare the roles of disturbance history, animal behavior, physical gradients, and plant life history in shaping species distributions at the population and landscape scale.  In addition to research commitments, students take courses and serve as teaching assistants in the Department of Environmental and Plant Biology.  The position is fully funded including tuition waivers.

Applicants should have a GPA of at least 3.2 and an average GRE score above the 60th percentile.  A strong work ethic, quantitative skills, and the ability work independently are essential.  Applicants should be physically fit and capable of field work under less-than-ideal conditions.  Previous field experience is desirable.

The Western Forest Initiative at Utah State University (http://westernforestinitiative.org) seeks to fill a PhD position funded by the T. W. Daniel endowment. The selected student will work in the Lutz lab on research in the three largest annually-surveyed, spatially-explicit forest plots in western North America, located in Yosemite, California (http://yfdp.org), Wind River, Washington (http://wfdp.org), and Cedar Breaks, Utah (http://ufdp.org). Experimental work can be conducted in the T. W. Daniel Experimental Forest near Logan, Utah.

The successful student can conduct research on a variety of topics, for example; spatial relationships among woody plants, forest community resistance and resilience, forest canopy-snow interactions, fuel dynamics, climate-mediated forest change, plant-soil interactions, carbon sequestration, seedling dynamics, understory-overstory interactions, or mechanisms and consequences of tree mortality. The existing dataset is particularly rich in demographic data, including annual tree mortality by cause. There will be considerable opportunity to interact with students, scientists, and academics affiliated with the Smithsonian Forest Global Earth Observatory (https://forestgeo.si.edu).

The Ideal Candidate Will Have:

A formal education or experience in forestry or a related natural resource profession with an emphasis in forest entomology or pathology is preferred. Experience may be substituted for education and experience if that experience has prepared the candidate to successfully carry out the duties of this position.

Knowledge of:

• dendrology;
• arboriculture;
• biology;
• biometrics and botany;
• forest ecology, mensuration;
• forest entomology and forest pathology;
• geographic information systems (ArcGIS);
• horticulture, hydrology, plant physiology, and silviculture;
• range and timber management;
• state and federal laws regulating the use of pesticides;
• forest fire management, forest insects and diseases, tree biology, forest economics, forest planning;
• project design and management, urban forestry, agroforestry, and forest certification programs.

We seek a sincere, motivated, and creative individual to apply for an exciting PhD assistantship in Forest Ecosystem Dynamics at Washington State University. The successful candidate will work with Dr. Arjan Meddens to examine the spatial and temporal patterns of ecosystem dynamics across the western United States. You will work on highly relevant research which aims to improve ecosystem resilience to future disturbances across the larger landscape under rapidly changing climate conditions. Research topics of interest include: (1) the dynamics of fire refugia and utilization of fire refugia by plant or animal species, (2) spatial and temporal patterns of bark beetle outbreaks, and/or (3) the utilization of high-resolution (UAV) lidar applications for forest measurements. A genuine interest in teaching is required and an interest in natural resource management applications is highly desired. Two-year RA funding is available with more funding possible in year 3 and 4 of the Ph.D. The successful candidate will be housed in the School of the Environment at Washington State University, which has great collaborative faculty with expertise in both the social and biophysical sciences.

The Tingley Lab in Global Change Ecology is joining the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles and seeking creative and motivated PhD students to join the lab in the Fall of 2020. Our research utilizes field and biodiversity data to explore how large-scale anthropogenic drivers of change (e.g., climate change, land-use change, fire regimes) affect geographic distributions and community interactions over short to long timespans, from years to centuries. Most of our research explores these topics using birds as the primary study organism.

Potential research areas include: 1) the impact of climate change on birds through shifts in distributions or phenology; 2) the mechanisms that define range limits; 3) the role of wildfire in structuring biodiversity; 4) statistical modeling of distributions and assemblages; and/or 5) using historical data to understand processes of change. Research projects will have opportunities to draw from extensive existing databases as well as collect new field data at current field sites in temperate mountain systems. Enthusiasm, excellent written and oral communication abilities, and strong quantitative skills are necessary. Backgrounds in ornithology, modeling, and statistics are desired.

The purpose of this position  is to carry out technical forestry tasks associated with unit goals, goals which contribute to the mission of the Oregon Department of Forestry, as assigned by the Reforestation Unit Forester. Because the Department's highest priority work is a forest fire emergency, this position may be utilized during those emergencies to provide assistance in a variety of ways.

We are seeking a motivated and independent postdoc to advance the state of the art in remote sensing and geospatial data integration in the field of ecosystem ecology. The successful candidate will work with the Landsat and Sentinel archive in conjunction with very high resolution drone acquired imagery to investigate how vegetation and topography govern microclimatic variability in post-wildfire landscapes. The objective of this project is to quantify influences on post-disturbance microclimatic variability and its effects on tree seedling survival.  The Earth Systems Ecology Lab (www.hurteaulab.org) is an interdisciplinary group of ecosystem ecologists in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico.  We work collaboratively to tackle a range of question related to global change and forest ecosystems.

Nominations are now open for new members of the International Association of Wildland Fires' (IAWF) Board of Directors. Nominations will be accepted through September 30, 2019 and successful candidates will begin their 3-year term on January 1, 2020. Individuals meeting the requirements may self-nominate.