May 15, 2014
CONTACTS: Pam Kan-Rice, (510) 206-3476, pam.kanrice@ucanr.edu and Jeannette Warnert, (559) 240-9850, jewarnert@ucanr.edu
University of California ANR wildfire experts
Carl Bell
UC Cooperative Extension regional advisor for invasive plants
Bell conducts wildfire recovery and invasive weeds research in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
(760) 815-2777
cebell@ucanr.edu
Mike De Lasaux
UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor for Plumas and Sierra counties.
Areas of expertise – wildfire fuel reduction on small forest parcels, forestry and watershed management.
(530) 283-6125
Sabrina Drill
UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Drill holds workshops to teach homeowners that the arrangement and proper maintenance of plants around homes in the wildland-urban interface can help reduce the risk of wildfire. Also, that choosing the right plants can protect the health of neighboring habitat by limiting the introduction of invasive plants.
(626) 586-1975
Keith Gilless
UC Berkeley professor of forest economics in the College of Natural Resources.
Area of expertise -- Wildland fire protection planning; forest economics and management; evaluation of prescribed burning.
Gilless has studied large urban-wildland fires, including the Oakland-Berkeley and Santa Barbara fires, to evaluate the probability of a house within the fire perimeter surviving as a function of the house's structural characteristics, its surrounding vegetation, and the defensive actions taken to protect it.
(510) 642-7171
Jan Gonzales
University of California Cooperative Extension project coordinator for the Wildfire Zone
The Wildfire Zone (www.wildfirezone.org) is a wildfire education and outreach program in San Diego County. Gonzales has been involved with wildfire prevention, safety and recovery education since 2005. She is an executive board member of the San Diego County Fire Safe Council and member of county and regional area safety task forces on wildfire and forest health issues.
(858) 822-7718
Susan Kocher
UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor for Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne and El Dorado counties.
After the Angora Fire near Lake Tahoe, Kocher evaluated the effectiveness of defensible space. She helped the California Tahoe Conservancy forester set up a rapid parcel assessment to identify high priority treatment sites on their parcels. Kocher worked with the California Department of Forestry structure damage assessment team to see how their formal evaluation methodology functions and collaborated with Ed Smith of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension to film examples of defensible space for the “Living with Fire in the Tahoe Basin” Web site, http://www.livingwithfire.info/tahoe/
(530) 542-2571
Max Moritz
UC Cooperative Extension wildfire specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. He is located in Santa Barbara County.
Areas of expertise -- Wildland fire, fire modeling, fire effects, shrubland ecosystems and spatial patterns of fire disturbance. By looking closely at fire history and monitoring plant moisture levels in the Santa Monica Mountains, Moritz and his colleagues developed a way to predict when an area becomes vulnerable to large-scale fires.
(805) 893-2125
Glenn Nader
UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor for Sutter and Yuba counties.
Areas of expertise -- Landscaping for fire safety
(530) 822-7515
Kimberly Rodrigues
UC Cooperative Extension natural resources advisor
Rodrigues' research focused on how to make public participation in resource management more meaningful and relevant to reduce conflicts. She participated in the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project, a 10-year project that has the potential to transform not only how we view forest fires, but how scientists, government agencies and public stakeholders interact in the pursuit of common goals.
(530) 750-1283
Tom Scott
UC Berkeley Cooperative Extension area natural resources wildlife specialist for Southern California.
Areas of expertise -- conservation of wildlife, wildlife management at the urban-wildland interface, and response of wildlife to fire. After a catastrophic 1993 fire season, Scott was instrumental in developing subsequent meetings and a book on fire ecology, management and policy. Scott authored Brushfires in California: Ecology and resource management in 1995, with Jon Keeley.
(951) 827-5115
John Shelly
UC Cooperative Extension forest products and biomass utilization advisor
Areas of expertise -- Forest products, wood manufacturing methods, biomass utilization, physical properties of wood.
(510) 665-3491
Scott Stephens
Associate professor of fire science and co-director Center for Fire Research and Outreach at UC Berkeley
Areas of expertise -– Wildland fire science, fire ecology, fire behavior, wildfire.
(510) 642-7304
Bill Stewart
UC Cooperative Extension forestry specialist in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley and co-director Center for Fire Research and Outreach
Areas of expertise -– Economics of fire prevention and fire suppression programs, economic assessment of property damages and environmental damages from fires.
(510) 643-3130