Defense Presentation Title: Multi-Scale Modeling for Wildland Fire Decision Support

Advisor: Dr. Jelena Vukomanovic, faculty fellow and associate professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management

Abstract: Wildland fire management includes the suppression of wildfires as well as safely and effectively conducting prescribed burns. The information needed by wildland fire managers and decision makers to inform action varies in space and time and is both increasingly uncertain and more urgently needed as climate change creates unprecedented conditions. Through three multi-scale, management-relevant modeling approaches, my dissertation aims to advance our understanding of current and forecasted wildland fire management challenges by (1) creating a framework to assess the complexity of wildfire management and identifying how frequently wildfires have interacted with communities over the past two decades, (2) co-producing a regional geospatial tool to estimate and communicate daily fire risk in South Florida, and (3) modeling forest stand change under divergent climate and prescribed burn scenarios in the Southern Appalachian mountains.