Building Wildfire Resilience
As wildfire risks continue to grow, communities need professionals who can develop sustainable, science-based solutions. The Fire Ecology and Wildfire Hazard Planning minor prepares you to understand wildfire behavior, ecosystem resilience and hazard planning through hands-on learning and interdisciplinary study.
What You’ll Study
You’ll explore wildfire ecology, fire behavior, fuels management and hazard planning while studying the environmental, social and policy factors that influence wildfire resilience.
What You’ll Take Away
You’ll gain the knowledge and hands-on experience to support wildfire management, ecosystem restoration and hazard planning while preparing for careers in natural resources, environmental consulting and public agencies.
Dig Deeper
Explore the science, technology and planning strategies used to understand wildfire, build resilient landscapes and protect communities.
Wildland Fire Control
You’ll explore fire control techniques for various wildland fuels and dig into fire physics, weather, fire behavior, suppression techniques,, fire line safety, air operations, and fire organization.
Fire and Society
You’ll dive into the history of human use of and attitude toward fire as well as the mythology and religion of fire and traditional, cultural, and ethnic variations and their influence fire management.
Environmental Mapping
You will study methods and applications in spatial data science using computer programming and geographic information systems (GIS) for environmental mapping.
Coursework Highlights
Through hands-on coursework and applied learning experiences, you will develop the technical knowledge and practical skills needed to lead in modern agriculture.
Classes and Labs
You’ll explore historic, current and future perspectives of wildland fire in California as well as sustainability and ecosystem health and the use of models and technology to solve complex land management problems.
You’ll examine the major forest types and processes that determine their development and productivity across the earth and gain an overview of the biophysical dynamics of fire and its interactions with vegetation structure and fuels management.
You’ll learn about the characteristics of rangeland ecosystems, processes of directing ecological change and the history of their management, particularly in North America.
You’ll learn about regulations pertaining to natural resource protection and management of public and private lands and the current environmental and natural resource law issues and disputes, focusing on evaluation of environmental impacts of public and private projects, programs, and activities.
You’ll explore the biophysical and socioeconomic issues affecting wildland fire management in urbanized landscapes. Fire risk assessment. Pre-fire prevention, mitigation, and preparedness during-fire response and post-fire recovery by public- and private-sector agencies and residents.
You’ll dive deep into the physical and design principles of fire protection engineering, including fire safety strategy, egress, human behavior, fire dynamics, smoke control, alarm and detection, suppression, structural behavior, failure analysis and engineering ethics.
Explore the Fire Ecology and Wildfire Hazard Planning Minor
Check out the course catalogue and learn more about the courses you’ll take and what you’ll learn.