Education and Outreach

The IFIRE facility works in coordination with the University of Idaho Fire Ecology & Management Program, to promote and advance the educational possibilities afforded to future fire managers.

The lab is actively used in undergraduate classes taught at the University of Idaho, including Fire Behavior and Fire Ecology. The facility is also used to demonstrate fuel combustion principals to general natural resources students. At the graduate level, the facility offers a course in combustion dynamics and is actively used by several graduate students for research.

Undergraduates are afforded the opportunity to perform experiments to understand how fuel properties (i.e. bulk density) affect fire behavior. These opportunities help reinforce the lessons students are exposed to in lectures and through fire behavior models.