Folks, last week I sat in on an hour-long briefing on wildfire for journalists, presented by SciLine, a free service of the the American Association for the Advancement of Science for journalists and scientists. This event was called “Wildfires: Climate connections & community impacts,” and featured presentations and a Q&A session with three scientists:
Dr. Phil Higuera, a professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, who’s going to describe how wildfires and wildfire seasons have been changing in recent years and decades and ways in which climate change and other factors are driving those changes. Second, you’re going to hear from Dr. Colleen Reid, an assistant professor in geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, who specializes in environmental health issues and is going to speak about these huge plumes of smoke that wildfires create, what’s in them and what are the health effects from breathing those pollutants. And third, you’ll hear from Dr. Crystal Kolden, assistant professor at the University of California, Merced, who will speak about the role of forest management in getting wildfire activity back in balance and will describe some of the individual- and community-level inequities that exist when it comes to the burden of risk from wildfires.
I think this was a superb briefing, and I hope the journalists in attendance have a new and better understanding of the topics discussed. The transcript and video are available here. It’s an excellent resource for we denizens of The Smokey Wire.