The California Fire Science Seminar Series will return on February 4, 2025, at 10 am. Join us for weekly virtual presentations and discussions on emerging fire science topics from a range of topics and speakers.
2025 Seminar Series Schedule
Seminars will be held every Tuesday from 10 am to 11 am.
February 4th, 2025: Early impacts of fire suppression in Jeffrey pine – Mixed conifer forests in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, Mexico
February 11th, 2025: Realignment of federal environmental policies to recognize fire’s role
February 18th, 2025: Changing the Fire Paradigm in the Klamath Mountains
February 25th, 2025: Shifts in seasonality and increases in hydroclimate whiplash are increasing California wildfire risk
March 4th, 2025: seminar canceled
March 11th, 2025: Lessons learned from L.A.
March 18th, 2025: Untrammeling the wilderness: Restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire
March 19th, 2025: Modelling wildfires: key issues, new approaches, remaining challenges
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Upcoming Seminars
Shifts in seasonality and increases in hydroclimate whiplash are increasing California wildfire risk
Date: February 25th, 2025
Abstract: Abundant evidence suggests climate change has already increased wildfire risk in California, mainly due to increases in both mean and episodic extreme landscape-scale vegetation aridity. Warming temperatures and increasing evaporative demand have directly driven most of this observed trend, and will continue to be prominent with further warming. However, additional aspects of observed and/or projected climate change in California may further amplify wildfire risk by altering historical relationships between fuel aridity, fuel loading, and hydroclimate extremes. In this talk, I will consider recent evidence that seasonal shifts in the onset of California's "rainy season," combined with increasingly extreme swings between extremely wet and dry conditions, may combine to produce increases in wildfire risk that are "larger than the sum of their parts.
Presented by: Dr. Daniel Swain
Dr. Daniel Swain is a climate scientist focused on the dynamics and impacts of extreme events—including droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires—on a warming planet. Daniel holds joint appointments as a climate scientist with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, and as a research fellow at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. He engages extensively with journalists and other media partners, serving as a climate and weather science liaison to print, television, radio, and web-based outlets to facilitate accessible and accurate coverage and conversations surrounding climate change. Daniel is an alumnus of the University of California, Davis (B.S., Atmospheric Science) and of Stanford University (Ph.D., Earth System Science), and completed his postdoctoral work at UCLA. He also authors the widely-read Weather West blog (weatherwest.com), which provides real-time perspectives on California weather and climate, and can be found on Twitter (@Weather_West), Bluesky (@WeatherWest) and YouTube (@WeatherWest).
Lessons learned from L.A.
Date: March 11th, 2025
More information coming soon!
Presented by: Yana Valachovic
Untrammeling the wilderness: Restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire
Date: March 18th, 2025
Abstract: Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the United States’ landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of trammeling. Through a framework that recognizes four orders of trammeling, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire exclusion on the natural conditions of fire-adapted wilderness ecosystems. In order to untrammel more than a century of fire exclusion, the implementation of active programs of intentional burning may be necessary across some wilderness landscapes. We also suggest greater recognition and accommodation of Indigenous cultural burning, a practice which Tribes used to shape and maintain many fire-adapted landscapes for thousands of years before Euro-American colonization, including landscapes today designated as wilderness. Human-ignited fire may be critical to restoring the natural character of fire-adapted wilderness landscapes and can also support ecocultural restoration efforts sought by Indigenous peoples.
Presented by: Clare Boerigter
Clare Boerigter is the Wilderness Fire Research Fellow for the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, part of the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station. Clare's research focuses on federal wilderness fire management, including the challenges, barriers, and benefits to the use of prescribed fire in wilderness landscapes.
Bonus Webinar!
Modelling wildfires: key issues, new approaches, remaining challenges
Date: March 19th, 2025
Abstract: Wildfires are ubiquitous and an integral part of the Earth System. Although they can be a destructive force, they are vital for maintaining the biodiversity and functioning of many ecosystems. Wildfire-induced changes in vegetation and landscape properties also have important feedbacks to climate through modulating water- and energy-exchanges and the carbon cycle. Thus, an understanding of the controls on fire regimes, and the ability to model vegetation-fire interactions, is important from an Earth System perspective. The current state-of-the-art global models used to predict how wildfires might behave in a changing climate capture some aspects of wildfire behaviour, but are poor at simulating fire seasonality, interannual variability and extreme fires. In large part, this reflects the fact that these models were developed before the era of big data and their treatment of many of the processes that control wildfires is poorly constrained. We now have a much better understanding of the environmental controls on the occurrence of wildfires and their behaviour. In this talk, I will showcase several new approaches to modelling wildfires, including the development and application of empirical data-driven models, the use of large ensemble modelling to capture extreme behaviour, and the application of eco-evolutionary optimality theory to provide a more robust coupling between vegetation and wildfire. I will also show why it is important to test these models under radically different climate states in the geologic past to evaluate how well they can be expected to simulate the response to future climate change.
Presented by: Sandy P. Harrison
Sandy P. Harrison is a Professor of Global Palaeoclimates and Biogeochemical Cycles at the University of Reading (UK) and Co-Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society. Sandy’s research focuses on the interaction of climate and the terrestrial biosphere, in the geologic past, present and future, using models and data analysis. Her current focus is on the use of eco-optimality theory and trait analysis to improve the vegetation models currently used in climate models for predicting land-atmosphere exchanges and impacts of climate change on the terrestrial biosphere. Her work on wildfires focuses on analyses of the controls on wildfire behaviour on different timescales and the development of new models to capture this behaviour. She was instrumental in setting up the FireMIP consortium, which seeks to evaluate and improve the global fire-enabled dynamic vegetation models used to predict future wildfires. She currently leads the IMFIREDUP consortium, an international effort to build the next-generation of fire-enable vegetation model using an eco-evolutionary optimality approach to model vegetation and wildfire.
Past Seminars
Early impacts of fire suppression in Jeffrey pine – Mixed conifer forests in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, Mexico
Date: February 4th, 2025
Abstract: Fire exclusion was first implemented across large areas of California and other areas of western North America in the late 19th or early 20th centuries but few studies have investigated how forests in the early decades after this decision were impacted. Jeffrey pine-mixed conifer forests of northern Baja California, Mexico, offer an area where this can be examined since fire suppression did not begin until the early 1970’s. We use repeated forest and fuel measurements taken over a 25-year period (1998–2023) and found significant changes in forest structure and fuel loads (increased tree density, fine fuel loads, large fuel loads, snag density, snag basal area) that together clearly demonstrate the cumulative effects of fire removal. Interestingly, Jeffrey pine became more dominant despite the lack of recent fire, which is counter to the shift towards more shade-tolerant tree species observed in many other fire-suppressed, frequent-fire forests in the western US. Although these changes in Baja California forests point towards increased fire hazard, they are still in relatively low hazard conditions compared to long-fire suppressed forests in the western US. Prescribed fire or managed wildfire could easily be applied to counter the increased fuel loads and tree densities detected in this work, without the need for mechanical manipulation. In addition to maintaining resilient forests, using fire will reduce the risk of losing the large astronomical observatory at this site to wildfire. Restoration and stewardship of resilient forest structures similar to those in Baja California is the only way forward to conserve similar forests of the Sierra Nevada, southern California mountains, and elsewhere in the western US.
Presented by: Professor Scott Stephens
Scott Stephens is interested in the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems. This includes how prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and management will influence people and ecosystems. He is also interested in wildland fire and forest policy and how it can be improved to meet the challenges of the coming decades, both nationally and internationally. Working with Indigenous partners to learn how to steward ecosystems into the future with climate change is a key area of research.
Stephens has given testimony on fire and forest policy at the US House of Representatives, the White House, California Assembly and Senate, California Governor’s office, and recently severed on the 2024 US Wildfire Commission. He is on the Board of Directors of the Climate Wildfire Institute and is one of the leaders of The Stewardship Project which is a partnership of Indigenous people and western science to improve federal fire policy.
Realignment of federal environmental policies to recognize fire’s role
Date: February 11th, 2025
Abstract: Enactment of the Clean Air Act (CAA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), three of the primary federal environmental laws, all coincided with the height of fire suppression and exclusion in the United States. These laws fail to acknowledge or account for the importance of fire in many fire-adapted and fire-dependent ecosystems, particularly in the American west, or the imperative for fire restoration to improve resiliency and reduce wildfire risk as identified by western science and Indigenous knowledge. We review the statutory and regulatory provisions of these federal laws to identify how the existing policy framework misaligns with the unique role of fire in ecosystems and with Tribal sovereignty, identify specific barriers and disincentives to beneficial fire use, and propose specific policy reforms.
Presented by: Sara A. Clark & Jenna Archer
Sara A. Clark is a partner at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP, a public interest law firm dedicated to representing non-profit organizations, Tribes, and public agencies, based in San Francisco. She has worked extensively with Tribes, Tribal organizations, land trusts, and prescribed burn associations to help implement beneficial fire projects and advance beneficial fire policy at the state and federal level. She serves as co-lead of The Stewardship Project, a federal policy and advocacy group that brings together Indigenous practitioners and western scientists. Ms. Clark is the lead author of the Good Fire reports for the Karuk Tribe and served as a subject matter expert on issues related to cultural burning and Tribal sovereignty in the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. She also serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors for Save the Redwoods League.
Jenna Archer is an attorney at Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP, a public interest law firm. She has worked with land trusts, Tribal organizations, and local and state government entities to further her clients’ work in land conservation and stewardship. Her practice areas include land trust and conservation law and beneficial fire policy. Ms. Archer has worked with The Stewardship Project to develop federal policy recommendations to promote the use of beneficial fire, including prescribed fire, Indigenous cultural burning, and wildfire managed for resource benefit.
Changing the Fire Paradigm in the Klamath Mountains
Date: February 18th, 2025
Abstract: This presentation will explore evolving approaches to fire in the Klamath Mountains, focusing on shifting perspectives and practices. Through discussion, the speaker will examine current challenges, emerging strategies, and collaborative efforts aimed at rethinking fire management in the region.
Presented by: Bill Tripp
Bill Tripp is the Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe, Department of Natural Resources. Bill is from the Western Klamath Mountains in northern California, where large fires have been a regular occurrence for decades. Bill serves as Co-Chair of the Western Region Strategy Committee bringing 27 years of place based experience in to the discussion on living with wildland fire.
The California Fire Science Seminar Series is organized and supported by the Berkeley Fire Research Group, College of Engineering, University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Merced and the California Fire Science Consortium. The planning committee includes Michael Gollner (UC Berkeley), Crystal Kolden (UC Merced), Jeanette Cobain (UC Merced), Scott Stephens (UC Berkeley), Autym Shafer (UC Berkeley), and Katanja Waldner (UC Berkeley).
A special thank you to the student committee who assisted with planning this series: Melissa Jaffe, Christina Richardson, Serenity Enriquez, Siva Viknesh, Nick Kalogeropoulos, Hanghui Chen, Guan Wang, Maria João Sousa, Halle Misal, Emma Kraus, Yeshvant Matey, Maya Elson, Nic Dutch, Louis Cimmino, Ajinkya Desai, Henri Brillon, Nicolò Perello, and Veronica Powell.
You can view information from the 2024 California Fire Science Seminar Series, as well as the recordings, here: https://www.cafirescience.org/events-webinars-source/category/seminarseries2024
