Integrating cultural fire regimes into wildfire and climate adaptation strategies

Graduate Student Name: 
Skye Greenler
Faculty mentor/Supervisor: 
836
Email Address (Faculty mentor/Supervisor): 
Department Affiliation: 
Forest Engineering Resources & Management
Job Location: 
Corvallis, OR
Description of project or research opportunity: 
I am beginning work with a large collaborative team in Northern California to evaluate fire, vegetation dynamics, and risk under expected climate change in the Klamath River Basin. One of the central components of this work, which will be the bulk of my dissertation, is developing an approach to integrate anthropogenic ignitions from indigenous peoples and natural ignitions to reconstruct an historical, cultural fire regime. This work will be done across a 1.2 million acre landscape in conjunction with a forest collaborative group and the Karuk tribe. I am planning to develop a geospatial story map for the study area that can evolve and grow with the project to use as a communication tool with land managers, tribal members, the public, and within our project team. My vision is that this interactive map will have different biophysical and geopolitical base maps; a layer that displays results from all previously published fire history and indigenous fire use studies in the area with their geographic location and pop-up boxes of key photos, graphs, results etc.; and then layers of our new map products and study results once they are finished. As this tool is built, people will be able to zoom into a specific part of our study landscape and toggle though all these different layers to understand and see the factors driving fire behavior, past studies (and their key results), historical photographs, and our results for that area to begin to understand how all of these factors connect. I am hoping to work with an undergraduate in the Forest Gump Program to develop the framework, base layers, and layer of previously published studies for this geospatial story map. I would expect this work to be mostly GIS and could involve some literature review work if the student was excited to do it. The undergraduate helping with this project would get to be actively involved in a large collaborative project that both scientist and collaborative groups are really exited about. This project would also result in a concrete, publicly available product that the student could put on their resume and use as an example for future employers. The larger project is rapidly growing, and if a student was excited about it, there may be opportunities to continue to stay involved. Additionally, this project could likely be done remotely or without the need for much face-to-face interaction if social distancing and remote work are still necessary over the summer.
Tasks student will perform: 
Student will primarily be responsible for Geospatial map production in ArcGIS including data manipulation, data visualization, map creation, and potential basic geospatial analytics. This task will require both analytical and design skills. Student may also work with partners to acquire necessary data, digitize maps, or preform basic literature review.
Special skills required: 
Basic GIS skills and interest in data visualization and design
Proposed dates of employment (must be between June 19 and September 4): 
Monday, June 15, 2020 to Friday, September 18, 2020
Anticipated hours worked per week: 
2-20