性爱五色天

Wildfire experts guide

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性爱五色天, Reno faculty offer a range of expertise related to wildfire science and wildfires' impacts on communities, ecosystems and watersheds around the world. Please email the University communications team to schedule an interview with one of the experts below. 

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Pulmonology; environmental and occupational respiratory disease; climate change issues in global health

Muge Akpinar-Elci

Dr. Muge Akpinar-Elci

Dean and professor of the School of Public Health

Research centers on environmental and occupational health and its impacts on vulnerable communities. As a public health leader, she focuses on developing solutions for pressing climate change issues in global health. She also concentrates on the One Health research agenda, developed by the World Health Organization, which examines the interconnected impacts of climate change on human, animal and environmental health, focusing on how shifts in climate patterns affect air pollution and disease transmission.

Forest management; forest resilience to wildfire and climate change; forest fuel reduction

Sarah Bisbing

Dr. Sarah Bisbing

Associate professor and director of the Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area

Dr. Bisbing is a forester whose research aims to identify proactive steps to ensure forests exist within the landscapes of the future. Her lab leverages forestry experiments to identify forest management practices that promote resistance, resilience, and adaptation to climate change and novel disturbance regimes. Her team also explores factors that determine successful regeneration and establishment of forests. As the director of the University’s school forest, the Whittell Forest and Wildlife Area, she is additionally responsible for the leadership, programs and administration of the forest and the associated Little Valley Research Station. 

Wildfire smoke impact on freshwater ecosystems; lake and watershed conservation; impact of climate change on lakes

Sudeep Chandra

Dr. Sudeep Chandra

Professor of limnology, director of the Ozmen Institute for Global Studies and director of the Global Water Center

Research focuses on the conservation of aquatic ecosystems and the betterment of livelihoods through the development of science-based environment policies. He is currently studying the impact of wildfire smoke on freshwater ecosystems. He has conducted work around the world, including research in Cambodia, Italy, Mongolia and Russia. Since 1997, Chandra has been active in understanding the ecological changes in Lake Tahoe and cocreating management solutions to protect the second-deepest lake in the United States. 

Impacts of climate change on trees; plant-climate interactions; past and present climate change

Adam Csank

Dr. Adam Csank

Associate professor of geography and department chair of the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering

Research includes the study of growth rings in trees to reconstruct past climates and the impacts of climate change on trees. He also studies historic land use patterns and finds novel ways to use data from the past to inform adaptation to climate change today by understanding risk, vulnerability and resiliency. His past studies range from climate reconstructions and land use change to studies of drought and tree mortality. Ongoing projects include the response of trees to climatic change and reconstructions of large-scale atmospheric patterns, streamflow, lake levels and historic atmospheric pollution. He primarily works in western North America, the Arctic and sub-Arctic. He is also available for interviews in French.

Wildfire engineering; wildland fire simulation; technology for fire response/management; wildfire data analytics

Hamed Ebrahimian

Dr. Hamed Ebrahimian

Assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering

Serves as the principal investigator on wildfire-relevant National Science Foundation and Department of Defense projects and director of the 性爱五色天, Reno Wildfire Hub. He has expertise in wildfire engineering, wildland and wildland-urban-interface fire simulation, AI-assisted wildfire data analytics, and technology development for fire response and management. He has studied several historic wildfires and works to improve computational and data capabilities for wildfire prediction and risk assessment.

Wildfire and effects on aquatic ecosystems; aquatic conservation and management issues

Jeff Falke

Dr. Jeff Falke

Lead scientist of the Nevada Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit

Research focuses on the population and community ecology of freshwater fishes. He examines how stressors such as climate change, wildfire and invasive species interact to affect freshwater fish population dynamics and aquatic ecosystems. 

Wildfire disturbances on land ecosystems; impact of climate change and human population growth on ecosystems

Erin Hanan

Dr. Erin Hanan

Assistant professor of fire & ecosystem ecology

Research examines interactions among plant, soil and hydrologic processes in land ecosystems. She studies how disturbances such as wildfire, insect outbreaks and forest clearing play an important role in these ecosystems and how disturbance events are becoming more frequent and severe in response to climate change and growing human populations. Her work also looks at how to mitigate the effects of climate change through management.

Wildfires and snow water; climate change impact on snowpack/precipitation; mountain ecohydrology

Adrian Harpold

Dr. Adrian Harpold

Associate professor of mountain ecohydrology

Research focuses on water’s movement through mountain ecosystems and interactions with plants, animals and the environment. He studies the impact of wildfires on snow water as well as the impacts of extreme climates on mountain snowpack and precipitation. He runs the , which tackles grand challenges related to water sustainability in response to unprecedented environmental change and increasing water demand in the 21st century.

Modeling of wildfires and landscapes; technology-enhanced fire science; data science

Fred Harris, Jr.

Dr. Fred Harris, Jr.

Associate dean of faculty and academic affairs and foundation professor of computer science and engineering

Serves as the principal investigator on the statewide , which was funded with a $20 million National Science Foundation grant. The project will increase the capacity of Nevada for wildland fire research, education and workforce development and demonstrate this increased capacity through technology-enhanced fire science in the regionally important sagebrush ecosystem. Harris’ research includes data science, software engineering, computer graphics and virtual reality.  

Wildfire education in K-12 schools

Li Ke

Dr. Li Ke

Assistant professor of science education

Research includes an innovative project that enables middle school students in Nevada to engage in various data practices, gaining insights into the impacts of wildfires on their lives and communities. This project, for which Ke received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award, directly impacts 15 middle school teachers and 1,500 middle school students in northwestern Nevada, including those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented groups. This research has the potential to transform how young learners understand and interact with data, especially regarding complex societal issues like wildfires. The project will demonstrate how data science can be integrated into K-12 curricula to help students use science and data to address pressing environmental issues.

Fire weather; wildfire plume dynamics; wildfire behavior in wildland/urban interface; wildfire tracking

Neil Lareau

Dr. Neil Lareau

Assistant professor of physics

Research focuses on high-impact weather in the western United States, including fire weather and wildfire plume dynamics (fire-tornadoes, pyrocumulonimbus clouds, etc.), the behavior of wildfires in the wildland/urban interface and tracking of wildfires. He recently worked with a team of researchers to study data from the Lahaina fire in Hawaii to assist emergency responders with decision-making to help reduce major loss of life and property damage during a wildfire. He has commented on wildfire-related topics for national news organizations including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Fox Weather. 

Native plant recovery; post-fire restoration; invasive species

Elizabeth Leger

Dr. Elizabeth Leger

Professor and director of Museum of Natural History

Research focuses on native plant recovery and restoration after wildfire, focusing on sagebrush shrublands. She works closely with state and federal partners to identify plants with the best characteristics for establishing in burned and invaded sites and conducts work on herbicides and controlled grazing in post-fire settings. Leger has also conducted research on invasive species, including cheatgrass, a dominant and problematic invasive species in our region.

Forest management; forest fuel reduction; forest resistance and resilience to climate change

Hunter Noble

Hunter Noble

Whittell Forest manager

Research focuses on how forest management can be used to replicate and reintroduce historic disturbance regimes of the Sierra Nevada that promote resistance and resilience to climate change while meeting the diverse needs of stakeholders and society. His work focuses on forest sustainability, including the use of prescribed fire as a forest management tool and other work to identify ways to sustain forests with natural disturbances such as wildfire, insect outbreaks and drought becoming more severe and frequent due to climate change. As forest manager of Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area, he aims to use the area as a living laboratory in the Sierras, ensuring it serves as a center for research, education and outreach for both the University community and the public.

Impacts of wildfire on snow; snow-forest-fire interactions; changing snow metrics due to climate change

Anne Nolin

Dr. Anne Nolin

Professor of geography

Research focuses on snow hydrology and climate, snow-forest-fire interactions and mountains as social-ecological systems. She has three decades of experience in remote sensing, field measurements and modeling of changing snow and ice. She and her students have published on “at risk” snow, impacts of wildfire on snow, new snow metrics in a warming world, melting snow and glaciers from Greenland to Alaska to the Andes, and new ways of mapping snow and ice from space.

Wildfire characteristics and impacts on soil and landscape; mechanics of landslides and debris flows

Dani Or

Dr. Dani Or

Nevada engineering distinguished professor

Research focuses on mass and energy transport through porous media. He studies the mechanics of landslide and debris flows, evaporation from land surfaces, and aspects of plants and microbial activity in soil. He is presently studying interactions between wildfire characteristics and impacts on soil and landscape functioning. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and was a professor of environmental physics at ETH Zurich before joining the 性爱五色天, Reno in 2023.

Animal and rangeland science; GIS; wildfire rehabilitation

Lucas Phipps

Senior rangeland ecologist

Research interests include studying the locations, distributions and patterns of plant communities, utilizing GIS and emerging technologies such as machine learning and remote sensing to assist in management and restoration of rangelands after a wildfire. He has worked in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Washington in environmental consulting projects, specializing in field ecology and GIS.

Wildland fire science; forestry; natural resource management; wildfire preparedness

Christina Restaino

Assistant professor, natural resources state specialist and director of the Living with Fire program

Research focuses on the intersection of land management and forest resilience to fire, drought and climate change. Her work has spanned the western United States and has focused more recently in the Sierra Nevada region of California and Nevada. As the director of the , she guides a team that creates science-based education and outreach resources for homeowners, educators, community groups and firefighting professionals to improve defensible space, ensure homes have proper building materials, manage native and non-native vegetation and prepare for evacuation.

Health effects of wildfire smoke on communities; outdoor air pollutants impacts on populations

Matthew Strickland

Dr. Matthew Strickland

Professor and department chair of biostatistics, epidemiology and environmental health

Research examines the population-level health effects of outdoor air pollutant concentrations. Presently, he is leading a study in Reno to estimate the cardiorespiratory health effects of smoke from wildfires. His work has also focused on susceptibility to air pollutants among children, adverse pregnancy outcomes with air pollution mixtures in urban, suburban and rural settings, and the impacts of air pollution exposure measurement error on health association estimates.

Wildfire smoke prediction; big data analytics; AI and edge intelligence

Lei Yang

Dr. Lei Yang

Associate professor of computer science and engineering

Serves as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation-funded project "Protecting Yourself from Wildfire Smoke: Big Data Driven Adaptive Air Quality Prediction Methodologies." His team has developed a labeled wildfire smoke dataset with an open-sourced wildfire smoke detection benchmark, a camera data transportation framework to efficiently transmit camera data in real-time, and agile parallel and distributed data processing methodologies to efficiently process vast amounts of data for real-time prediction. Yang's research focuses on big data, AI/ML, edge intelligence and cyber-physical systems.