Fire Effects Portal

Selected candidates will have the opportunity to advance their knowledge and professional skills while contributing to meaningful outcomes for rural communities and landscapes through involvement with a suite of Sierra Institute projects. General project areas include:

• Collaborative Restoration Planning and Forest Management
• Disadvantaged Community and Tribal Involvement
• Collaborative Natural Resource Management
• Community Capacity Building and Biomass Utilization Support
• General Organizational Support

The purpose of this survey is to gather information from stakeholders and members of the public about our priorities for Washington’s forests. The information will be used to inform the development of Washington’s Forest Action Plan. Forest Action Plans are established in each state and set a course for strategic actions that protect, enhance, and conserve forest resources across all-lands. Washington published its first Forest Action Plan in 2010. The updated Forest Action Plan will be completed by June 2020.

The Department of Earth System Science (ESS) at the University of California, Irvine invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position focused on the predictive understanding of changing hydrological and climate extremes. These extremes are unusual events that inflict disproportionate damage to ecosystems and society including floods, droughts, heat waves, cold extremes, hurricanes, atmospheric rivers, wildfires, and intense air pollution episodes. Identifying the contribution of climate change to the frequency, intensity and behavior of individual events, as well as the aggregated statistics of multiple events, is a field of science that is increasingly shaping the public’s perception of climate change. We welcome applications from researchers who are using a range of approaches, including observational analysis, dynamical theory, machine learning, statistical modeling, and dynamical and fully coupled Earth system models to study changing hydrological and climate extremes, with an emphasis on creating new knowledge about the basic mechanisms that will enable a predictive understanding of these phenomena and their impacts on human and natural systems. UC Irvine’s ESS department was founded to explore the global environmental changes that occur on human time scales. The department has 24 full time faculty from diverse backgrounds (http://www.ess.uci.edu/). The successful applicant will have a strong research agenda, a commitment to excellence in teaching and in promoting diversity and inclusion in a collegial, cross-disciplinary department.

The Yosemite & Sequoia Reserve Director will be responsible for the leadership, operations, programs, and administration of the Sierra Nevada Research Station (SNRS). SNRS is located at Wawona in Yosemite National Park (often referred to as the Yosemite Field Station) and it is the hub of the Research Station. The Reserve Director will also have responsibility for the Sequoia Field Station (SFS), located at Wolverton in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, and potentially also for the Circle J Ranch, in collaboration with SCICON in Springville, CA. These latter two partnerships are under development and they are not yet official NRS reserves.

The Reserve Director will provide daily management of the Yosemite Field Station, and general oversight of SNRS operations: managing and implementing requests for facilities use, serving as the primary liaison between the field station users, UC Merced, the community, the Park(s), and additional partners.

The Reserve Director will also use advanced concepts in environmental research and facilities management to effectively assist in the development, implementation and monitoring of operational policies for a field station(s). This includes staying current on and implementing best practices and opportunities for running a research station; ensuring that budget targets are met; and keeping use records and preparing annual reports.

The Reserve Director will provide expertise related to field station responsibility, such as wildlife biology, forestry, agriculture, ecosystems research, cultivation, meteorology, oceanography, etc., or technical concepts related to the area of research being conducted at the field stations. They will maintain and enhance research, education, and outreach partnerships and programs, and enhance Research Station facilities and programs through extramural proposals and development activities.

The Great Basin Institute (GBI) expects to have positions available by Spring 2020.

Explore your Public Lands with GBI:

• Spend the season working outside on a forestry, trail, or habitat restoration hand crew
• Support forestry, wildlife, and vegetation monitoring projects in the Sierra Nevada
• Learn and serve in National Parks, Forests, and Wilderness Areas
• Get paid and earn scholarships & college credit
• Work directly with land management agencies

The University of Montana Wilderness Institute seeks to fill a PhD assistantship to work on a funded project entitled, “Ecosystem Response to Fire in the Wilderness.” This project will measure vegetation and fuels data across sites that burned in the last 40 years in order to assess the potential for fire-caused changes to forest structure and function, including the possibility of conversions to non-forest. This project is a collaboration with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI). The position will be supervised by Dr. Andrew Larson.

The PhD student will: conduct field and remote-sensing based investigations of fire effects in wilderness areas, including publication of results in peer-reviewed journals; work collaboratively with UM faculty, staff, and students, ALWRI researchers, and wilderness managers; and support undergraduate education at UM through occasional service as a teaching assistant, field trip leader, or field course assistant. Six semesters of support are available, with annual renewal based on satisfactory performance.

Two PhD degree options are available: Forest and Conservation Sciences or Systems Ecology.

Text of the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF) statement:

Climate change has already had significant consequences in the global wildfire reality, affecting citizens as well as the global wildland fire community. Many key issues of importance to the IAWF - including firefighter and civilian safety, fire management expenses, changing weather patterns, natural role of fire, fire regimes and ecosystem succession, as well as the wildland urban interface - all require recognition of the role of climate change.

Globally, we regularly see new reports about the “worst”, “largest”, “most expensive”, and “deadliest” fires and fire seasons. In 2019 and 2018, striking headlines read “Arctic on Fire” (Sweden, Russia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska), and the most expensive and largest fire years were recorded in 2018 in California and British Columbia, respectively, breaking the previous records set in 2017. The Camp Fire (CA, 2018), Attica Greece (2018), Black Saturday Australia (2009), and Portugal (2017) fires were all ranked amongst the top 11 deadliest fires in the last 100 years.

Under current climate change scenarios, fire regimes will change in terms of increases in burned area, severity, fire season length, frequency, and ignitions from lightning. Many parts of the world have already experienced an increase in record breaking temperatures and recurring droughts that have led to shifts in wildland fire. There is already evidence of climate-driven fire regime change in the Northern Hemisphere upper latitudes with fire risk increasing in non-traditional fire-prone countries. The consequences of human actions are here today, not in some distant future, and these are alarming and, most important, escalating.

The IAWF encourages all countries to emphasize increased international fire training and to implement easier cross-border sharing of professional fire management resources for suppression and prescribed fire opportunities. These will lessen the irrationally heavy burden any single country will have to carry to manage extreme fire seasons. Homes and communities must be better planned and built, so they are increasingly fire resistant and more adapted to natural disasters of all types. Health impacts of fires have long-term consequences, not only those that are immediate from the flames but also those from smoke and toxins, and these must be considered when planning and managing for future wildland fires. Wildfires and smoke do not recognize borders. As the global community tries to manage the new wildfire challenges, it is incumbent on everyone to prepare to support international neighbours in protecting lives and communities from fires and their impacts.

IAWF Vice-President Toddi Steelman recently said in Wildfire magazine (August 2019) that “Recent extreme weather events have catalysed public belief in, and concern about, climate change, and boosted public support for government actions to reduce its harmful impacts. This gives us a window of opportunity when conditions are right to make great strides on climate if we are strategic about it.” This window of opportunity requires people having the knowledge and political will to act now. Our global scientific community needs to publicly share knowledge learned about patterns of extreme wildland fire and weather, as well as how climate change is associated with these patterns. Our global fire management community needs to leverage its credibility to share its experiences about how climate change and its role in extreme weather is playing out in their day to day work environments. Connecting extreme weather events to real on-the-ground consequences can help more people understand how climate impacts are affecting us all.

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.”

The Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP) seeks a post-doctoral research fellow to explore the social and economic impacts of climate change in Alaska from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Possible sectors of analysis include but are not limited to:

• fisheries (including ocean acidification),
• transportation (and trans-Arctic shipping),
• infrastructure, mineral,
• oil & gas resource development,
• mixed-subsistence economies, and
• the provision of related climate services.
• We are also interested in an analysis of the economic impacts of ACCAP’s work.

This post-doctoral fellowship includes opportunities to directly engage ACCAP’s partners and stakeholders in use-inspired basic research and knowledge co-production. The person in this position will work closely in an interdisciplinary team environment that includes a spectrum of senior scientists, junior scientists, graduate students, and research professionals. Collaborating organizations include the Center for Arctic Policy Studies (CAPS) at UAF, the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and other ACCAP partner organizations.

• Desired state date: Negotiable. As soon as possible.
• 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 “Econ Post-Doc Application” in the subject line.  The cover letter should include:

• A description of the candidate’s PhD research,
• A statement of interest outlining potential research project, including sectors of interest, and research approach, and
• A description of past experience with research in Alaska and/or the Arctic.

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).