2026 California Fire Science Seminar Series
The California Fire Science Seminar Series will return on January 21, 2026, at 11 am. Join us for weekly virtual presentations and discussions on emerging fire science topics from a range of topics and speakers.
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: Morgan Abbott, Yi Yan, Konstantinos Vogiatzoglou, Sol Alvarez-Taubin, Ajinkya Desai, Kase Wheatley, Minho Kim, Abigail Oswald, Yuerong Xiao, Nic Dutch, Amy Metz, and Helene Le Gall.
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Webinar
California’s fire regimes are shifting at an accelerating pace, driving ecosystem degradation and increasing risks to human communities. Effective, science-based responses require a strong foundation of evidence. As the use of fire as a management tool expands, it is critical to demonstrate its ecological benefits while carefully considering trade-offs such as smoke emissions.
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Webinar
PG&E operates over 130,000 KM of overhead electric lines in Northern and Central California that can fail during weather events and present risk of wildfire ignition when fuels are receptive. Operational grid mitigations such as proactive deenergizations and sensitive relay settings effectively reduce ignition probability but lead to increased customer outages.
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Lecture
This presentation explores the role of Prescribed Burn Associations (PBA's) and community-based fuel reduction programs in expanding the use of “good fire” in California, with a focus on work taking place in Butte County.
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Wildfire smoke is becoming a challenge for California’s agricultural regions, affecting both crop production and the communities that sustain it. This talk examines how wildfire and wildfire smoke are reshaping risks to California agriculture, using the wine grape sector as a central case study.
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Lecture
We use a range of data to quantify the past and future drivers of wildfire smoke across the US, the impacts of exposure to this smoke on a range of health outcomes, and the efficacy of proposed solutions to reduce smoke emissions and exposures. We find that smoke exposure is undoing decades of air quality improvements in the US and leading to tens of thousands of premature deaths across the US per year, a…
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Lecture
Fire is a critical and natural part of many ecosystems, but the nature of fire is rapidly shifting due to climate change. From a biological perspective, fire is a regular disturbance that affects the distribution and abundance of species and has shaped evolution for millions of years. Nevertheless, we are entering an unprecedented period where the dominant nature of fire is rapidly changing, disrupting both human…
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Lecture
In the Western United States, wildfire has become seasonal, altering ecosystems and setting records for acreages burned. For millennia, Tribes around the world engaged in fire stewardship, or cultural burns, as eco-cultural land tending responsibilities. However, removal of Indigenous Peoples and persistent “no burn” fire suppressive policies have contributed to the current wildfire predicament.
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Lecture
Native people have successfully stewarded the land for thousands and thousands of years pre-contact. This presentation will delve into fire's role in ecosystem function. Fire is meant to be part of the ecosystem and its absence has had devastating effects on the environment.