ENV 650b () / 2024-2025

Fire Ecology and Management of the US West

Credits: 3 Spring 2025: Time and location TBA

The goal of this seminar is to offer an introduction to the ecology and management, and the policy drivers, of wildland fire in western North America. We seek to build a base of knowledge and understanding regarding fire and its applications/management in modern forestry. We start by learning the basic history and ecology of forest fire, then look at landscape-level fire behavior, prescribed fire applications, and the drivers of catastrophic fire. The course concludes with an applied field-learning experience managing fire at Yale-Myers Forest. We meet once a week, with a guest Zoom lecturer from the field of fire ecology and management joining most weeks. Each week, there is a presentation followed by a discussion of the lecture content and reading material assigned by the guest lecturer. Students are expected to have read the papers and to come with questions and thoughts ready to discuss. There are several field trips, and if logistically feasible, a prescribed burn that students are expected to participate in.