Wildfire

Facing a Top Climate Factor of Our Time

wildfire interdisciplinary research center truck with radar sits in fieldThe multi-disciplinary approach to fire science and management at SJSU displays a commitment to understanding and mitigating the physical and social effects of fire as one of the most critical emerging environmental factors of our time. Leading-edge tools and policies created at SJSU are in use worldwide. Below is a rotating selection of our standout investigators in this area.

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Selected Publications

Brewer, M. and Clements, C. (2019). The 2018 Camp Fire: Meteorological analysis using in situ observations and numerical simulations. Atmosphere, 11(1).

Dhar, S. and Gao, J. (2023). Wildfire Air Quality Prediction: A Data-Driven Approach. International Journal of Disaster Response and Emergency Management, 6(1).

Diallo I., et al. (2024). Effects of spring Tibetan Plateau land temperature anomalies on early summer floods/droughts over the monsoon regions of East Asia and South Asia. Climate Dynamics, 62(4).

Kochanski, A., et al. (2023). Analysis of methods for assimilating fire perimeters into a coupled fire-atmosphere model. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6.

Russell, W. and McBride, J. (2003). Landscape scale vegetation-type conversion and fire hazard in the San Francisco bay area open spaces. Landscape and Urban Planning, 64(4).

Wilkin, K., Stasiewicz, S., Kocher (2023). Increasing prescribed fire use on private lands: findings from prescribed fire workshops with private landowners in the Sierra Nevada region of California. Journal of Fire Ecology.

Award Highlights

Clements, Tohidi, Wilkin, Kochanski, Stasiewicz, “IUCRC Phase I, San Jose State University: Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC)” — NSF, 2021

Kochanski, “Distributed Spacecraft with Heuristic Intelligence to Monitor Wildfire Spread for Responsive Control” — NASA through the Bay Area Research Institute, 2023

Kochanski, Clements, “Evaluating and Improving Live and Dead Fuel Moisture Models for Use in Gridded Forecast Systems” — U.S. Forest Service, 2023

Wilkin, Staciewicz,  “The Central Coast Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program” — California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), 2023

Yang, Wilkin, “NASA Bridge Program, FireSage: SJSU-NASA" — NASA, 2023

Affiliates

Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center 

Fire Weather Research Laboratory


Featured Faculty

clementsCraig Clements
Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science
Fire Weather, Wildfire Observations, Extreme Fire Behavior, Mountain Meteorology
ORCID: 0000-0001-9999-8621

dharSubhankar Dhar
Professor of Information Systems and Technology
Data Science, AI, Mobile Computing, Ad Hoc Networks, Smart Cities, Big Data Analytics
ORCID: 0000-0003-1493-451X

dialloIsmaila Diallo
Assistant Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science
Climate Modeling, Land/Atmosphere Interaction, Climate Dynamics, Extreme Climate Events, Artificial Intelligence for Earth Systems, Wildfire and Climate Change
ORCID: 0000-0003-1209-4107

kochanskiAdam Kochanski
Associate Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science
Wildfires, Air Quality, Fire Modeling, Smoke, Fire Risk, Machine Learning, Smoke Forecasting, Satellite Fire Detections, Dire Forecasting, WRF-SFIRE, WRFx
ORCID: 0000-0001-7820-2831

russellWill Russell
Professor of Environmental Studies
Forest Disturbance and Recovery, Fire Ecology Ecosystem Restoration, Environmental Education
ORCID: 0000-0003-3778-3734

willkinKate Wilkin
Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

Fire Ecology and Management, Home Ignition Zones, Fuels Treatments, Prescribed Fire
ORCID: 0000-0002-4928-3879

Potential collaborators and members of the media may contact us at officeofresearch@sjsu.edu.