Wildfire experts guide

University of Nevada, Reno faculty offer a range of expertise related to wildfire science and wildfires' impacts on communities, ecosystems and watersheds around the world. 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; changing ecosystems and the role of One 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 changing ecosystem 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.

Interview languages: English and Turkish

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Policy development and wildfire; water, land use and air quality; environmental and natural resource economics

Andrew Ayres

Dr. Andrew Ayres

Assistant professor of economics

Research touches on key social science questions surrounding wildfire, climate change, and the development of mitigation and adaptation policies. Broader topics include how rules, norms and regulation are agreed upon and influence human behavior in river basins, agricultural communities and airsheds. Leverages disciplinary expertise in environmental and natural resource economics alongside outreach to key management stakeholders to develop cost-effective solutions. 

Interview languages: English and German

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Disaster and emergency preparedness in public health

Jim Bellamy

Dr. Jim Bellamy

Undergraduate program director at the School of Public Health

Research focuses on public health emergency preparedness and training. He developed and conducted a local health department preparedness assessment survey, a tool that determines how well health departments are performing on preparedness measures and identifies areas for improvement in future emergency responses.

Interview languages: English

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Emergency medicine; burn injuries; smoke inhalation; trauma-related injury

David Benaron

Dr. David Benaron

Vice chief of the UNR Med Department of Emergency Medicine; emergency medicine specialist

Dr. David Benaron is a highly experienced emergency medicine specialist with over a decade of practice. He serves as vice chief of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine Department of Emergency Medicine and is a physician at Western Emergency Physicians. He is deeply committed to supporting and connecting with marginalized communities through his healthcare provision. Living next to National Forest land, he also has a personal understanding of the profound impact of wildfires. He trained at the UC San Diego Regional Burn Center, where he spent significant time in the Burn Intensive Care Unit (ICU). This specialized training has been invaluable, as in his eight years in Reno, he has treated countless burn and smoke inhalation injuries.

Interview languages: English and Spanish

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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 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. 

Interview languages: English

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

Sudeep Chandra

Dr. Sudeep Chandra

Professor of limnology, 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 environmental policies. He studies the impact of wildfire smoke on aquatic ecosystems including Lake Tahoe and lakes in California. 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 co-creating management solutions to protect the second-deepest lake in the United States.

Interview languages: English

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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 Geography Department in the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering

Research includes the study of tree rings to reconstruct past climate 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 to studies of plant response to drought and tree mortality. Ongoing projects include the response of trees to climatic change as well as reconstructions of large-scale atmospheric patterns and reconstructions of streamflow, lake levels and historic atmospheric pollution to understand fire history in ancient Arctic forests. He primarily works in western North America, the Arctic and sub-Arctic. 

Interview languages: English and French

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Visual communication and wildfire; societal impacts on personal protections against wildfire smoke; environmental communication

Ran Duan

Dr. Ran Duan

Assistant professor of environmental communication

Research interests include environmental, science, risk and visual communication, including the uses and effects of visuals in the communication of wildfire and climate change and the development of scales for measuring visual literacy in science communication. Her recent research has focused on how people’s actions to protect themselves from wildfire smoke are affected by others and the world around them. She also examined how photographs of wildfire evoked people’s concern for climate change, using photographs of California’s 2018 Camp Fire on Twitter. 

Interview languages: English and Mandarin

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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 University of Nevada, 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.

Interview languages: English

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

Jeff Falke

Dr. Jeff Falke

Unit leader of Nevada Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research

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.

Interview languages: English

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Climate change and management effects on wildfire regimes; fire effects on ecosystem and watershed processes

Erin Hanan

Dr. Erin Hanan

Associate professor of fire & ecosystem ecology

Dr. Hanan leads the Fire and Dryland Ecosystems Lab at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research examines how climate change and land management practices contribute to fire hazard. Equally important, she strives to understand how wildfires influence the ecosystem and watershed processes driving water security. Her research employs a range of tools and techniques, from examining microbial processes in individual soil cores to modeling watersheds and ecoregions. Through this research, she aims to develop cross-scale, integrative approaches for understanding and responding to emerging challenges in fire science.

Interview languages: English

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Wildfires and water; climate change impact on snowpack and mountain water resources; mountain ecohydrology

Adrian Harpold

Dr. Adrian Harpold

Associate professor of mountain ecohydrology

Research focuses on water’s movement through mountain ecosystems and interactions with vegetation. He studies the impact of wildfires on water supplies as well as the impacts of extreme climates on mountain flooding and drought. He runs the Nevada Mountain Ecohydrology Lab, which tackles grand challenges related to water sustainability in response to unprecedented environmental change and increasing water demand in the 21st century.

Interview languages: English

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

Fred Harris, Jr.

Dr. Fred Harris, Jr.

Associate dean, College of Engineering, and foundation professor of computer science and engineering

Serves as the principal investigator on the statewide Harnessing the Data Revolution for Fire Science project, 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.  

Interview languages: English

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Stress prevention and management for wildland firefighters; firefighter mental health and mental fitness

Heather Haslem

Heather Haslem

Senior project coordinator of workforce development at the Center for the Application of Substance Abuse Technologies

Heather Haslem leads a course for Bureau of Land Management wildland firefighters that encourages mental fitness and prevention and management of stress. During the course, Haslem and her team travel to six districts around Nevada prior to the start of fire season and during the season. The goal is to arm firefighters with tools to improve their nervous system and emotional regulation. Haslem is a Duke University-trained integrative health coach and a National Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach. She is a qualified mindfulness-based stress reduction teacher and yoga instructor.

Interview languages: English

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Wilderness medicine; medical evacuation from the wilderness; outdoor medicine

Tony Islas

Dr. Arthur (Tony) Islas

Professor in the Department of Family Medicine, director of the Sports Medicine Fellowship and director of the Wilderness Medicine Fellowship

Arthur (Tony) Islas, M.D., is the founder of the University’s Wilderness Medicine Fellowship program. The fellowship offers a unique opportunity to dive into the world of wilderness medicine. Clinical time is divided between Reno, Nevada, and Great Basin National Park to obtain an expansive understanding of caring for individuals in austere environments. Dr. Islas’s specialties are family medicine, sports medicine and travel medicine. His work takes him around the globe, consulting on medical treatments and evacuations for adventurers.

Interview languages: English

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AlertTahoe; wildfire detection; wildfire cameras

Graham Kent

Dr. Graham Kent

Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering

Dr. Kent started AlertTahoe, a public and private program to bring earthquake early warning and a fire camera network for early detection of ignition to the Tahoe region. Together, this system is designed to provide hardened communications for all hazards through a redundant mesh microwave network. The real-time Axis cameras alert fire personnel at the earliest stages of fire ignition in the Tahoe-Truckee area, throughout Nevada and in southern Idaho.

Interview languages: English

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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. 

Interview languages: English

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Wildfire science knowledge sharing; wildfire science technical transfer

Eugénie Montblanc

Eugénie Montblanc

Great Basin Fire Science Exchange Program manager

Manages the Great Basin Fire Science Exchange (one of 15 regional exchanges funded by the national Joint Fire Science Program) to conduct activities and events that bring land managers and scientists together to share current fire and fuels information, and develop applicable resources that address fire and fuels management questions. Helping land managers access the best fire, fuels and restoration science, and helping scientists understand the priority needs of land managers, enhances land treatment decision-making to meet the social and ecological needs of our region.

Interview languages: English

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Forest and wildland fuel management; fuel reduction

Hunter Noble

Hunter Noble

Forest manager, Whittell Forest

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 natural disturbances under a changing climate, while still meeting the diverse needs of stakeholders and society. This includes managing for timber, wildlife and their habitat, water and air resources, forest health, and aesthetics, in addition to reducing fuels and wildfire risk. As forest manager of Whittell Forest & Wildlife Area, he works to support the forest’s mission 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. In doing so, he collaborates with a variety of public, government, tribal and academic stakeholders.

Interview languages: English

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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.

Interview languages: English

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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 University of Nevada, Reno in 2023.

Interview languages: English

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Climate extremes; precipitation; snow; mountain weather and climate; meteorological instrumentation

Baker Perry

Dr. Baker Perry

Nevada state climatologist and professor of climatology

Research focuses on mountain regions that serve as essential water towers that sustain billions of people and critical ecosystems downstream. Perry led the expeditions that installed the highest altitude weather station network in the world on the south side of Mount Everest in Nepal. He has also worked extensively at the highest reaches of the Andes Mountains in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, where he and his teams have investigated cryosphere changes and associated impacts on water resources. In his current role as Nevada state climatologist, Perry is actively working to enhance and expand observational networks in the western U.S. He has been a volunteer firefighter since 2005.

Interview languages: English and Spanish

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Animal and rangeland science; GIS; wildfire rehabilitation

Lucas Phipps

Dr. Lucas Phipps

Assistant professor of rangeland ecology and management

Research interests include studying the locations, distributions, and patterns of soils and plant communities and utilizing GIS and emerging technologies such as machine learning and remote sensing to assist in the 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, restoration and rehabilitation, and spatial analysis.

Interview languages: English

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

Christina Restaino

Dr. 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 Living with Fire program, 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.

Interview languages: English

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AlertWildfire; machine learning

William Savran

Dr. William Savran

Network manager, Nevada Seismological Laboratory

Leads the AlertWildfire camera network, a network of more than 1,000 cameras across the West, set-up to monitor wildfires. He also studies the fundamental nature of seismicity and applies statistical and machine learning methods to interpret earthquake data.

Interview languages: English

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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.

Interview languages: English

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Homeownership and wildfire; mitigating wildfire risk on private property; home insurance and defensible space

Michael Taylor

Dr. Michael H. Taylor

Associate professor of economics, state specialist - agricultural & resource economics

Research and outreach activities focus on several issues of critical importance for Nevada, including wildland fire, urban and agricultural water use, invasive plant management, public land management, and the role of natural resources in regional economic development. His recent research has focused on understanding homeowners' decisions to mitigate wildfire risk and create defensible space, selecting the right policy to promote defensible space in the wildland-urban interface, and mitigating wildfire risk on private property with spatial dependencies. 

Interview languages: English and French

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Social workers in disaster relief; mental health in vulnerable communities; community trauma; trauma-informed care

Eugenia Weiss

Dr. Eugenia Weiss

Associate dean, School of Social Work

Researches mental health and well-being in vulnerable communities, particularly those impacted by trauma. Weiss has more than 20 years of experience as a mental health provider, specializing in trauma-informed care as a licensed clinical social worker and as a licensed clinical psychologist in private, public and nonprofit settings with underserved communities.

Interview languages: English and Spanish

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Wildfire and real estate; wildfire smoke and borrowing costs

Sean Wilkoff

Dr. Sean Wilkoff

Assistant professor of finance

Research focuses on current issues in real estate, the municipal bond market, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Dr. Wilkoff has a recent working paper with a team of researchers that finds that wildfire smoke increases borrowing costs for healthcare facilities. Prior to joining the University, he previously worked as a financial economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and as an associate at Cornerstone Research, an economic litigation consulting firm.

Interview languages: English

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Wildfire smoke detection; 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.

Interview languages: English

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