Media tip sheet: Dozens of CSU experts available to discuss issues related to wildfires
As wildfires become more frequent and severe across the Western United States and beyond, Colorado State University researchers are leading the way in studying the impacts of these historic blazes and learning how to best protect our forests and communities.
Numerous CSU researchers are available to share their expertise about multiple story angles related to wildfires, from the health impacts of smoke to forest management to how an algorithm could help determine which homes are most likely to burn.
See a list of experts below. To schedule interviews, please contact news@colostate.edu.
Wildfire science and natural resources
Courtney Peterson, research associate in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship
Peterson’s research focuses on climate change adaptation, environmental education, forestry, wildfire mitigation and collaboration across communities.
Camille Stevens-Rumann, assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship
Stevens-Rumann is a former wildland firefighter. She can discuss climate change, forest resilience, ecology and what fuels forest fires. Stevens-Rumann’s research focuses on ecosystem disturbances and particularly, the impact of events like wildfires.
Brett Wolk, assistant director at the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
Wolk develops and supplies usable science with and for forest and fire managers, policy-makers and the academic research community. His areas of interest and expertise include translating science principles into practice, developing ecological monitoring programs, adaptive management processes, forest and fire policy, botany and assessing impacts of forest management on understory vegetation and wildland fuels.
Forest management and wildfire policy
Jude Bayham, associate professor of agricultural and resource economics
Bayham can discuss the economics of wildfire management, including estimating the impact of threatened homes on how resources are allocated across the country, understanding the factors that influence communities’ willingness to adopt wildfire mitigation, and the health and social consequences of wildfire smoke.
Tony Cheng, professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and director of the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute
Cheng can discuss the strategies and challenges associated with managing forests and forest fires across the U.S. and in Colorado. His research also focuses on how organizations address wildfire threats, from national-level policy to local community wildfire mitigation and forest restoration efforts.
Hussam Mahmoud, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Mahmoud researches community resilience, and has developed a model that can predict the paths wildfires will take through communities, including which buildings are more likely to burn and which are more likely to survive.
Sridesh Pradhan, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Construction Management and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Pradhan is studying the impacts of wildfires on U.S. lumber supply chains.
Christopher Robertson, director of the CSU Drone Center
Robertson works with researchers to analyze wildfires and flies drones to assess live fires and analyze burn scars for optical recovery and reforestation.
Courtney Schultz, professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship and director of the Public Lands Policy Group
Schultz, who has testified before Congress on wildfire issues, can discuss natural resource policy and governance, policy innovations to support collaborative landscape restoration, effective fire management and climate change adaptation on U.S. forest lands.
Smoke, air quality and the health impacts of wildfires
Delphine Farmer, professor in the Department of Chemistry
Farmer studies both indoor and outdoor pollution and recently authored a high-profile study regarding wildfire smoke and how it pollutes the air inside homes.
Shantanu Jathar, associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
Jathar studies air pollutant emissions from wildfires and structural fires at the wildland-urban interface, including the atmospheric evolution of these air pollutants and their impact on climate and human health.
Tiffany Lipsey, director of the Heart Disease Prevention and First Responder Testing programs in the Human Performance Clinical Research Laboratory
Lipsey has been working with Colorado firefighters and emergency personnel for over 20 years and has been involved in physiological testing for over 2,200 of these first responders. Some of her firefighting-related projects include cardiovascular disease risk assessment, lifestyle modification, carcinogen exposure, temperature regulation, cooling mechanisms, novel medical devices, noise exposure and performance.
Sheryl Magzamen, epidemiology concentration lead of the Colorado School of Public Health
Magzamen can discuss the health impacts of wildfire smoke. She is an environmental health scientist who seeks to understand the role of inhalation hazards on respiratory health.
Steven Miller, director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
Miller’s expertise focuses on the detective analysis and modeling of active wildfires, as well as the transport of smoke through the atmosphere.
Jeffrey Pierce, professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science
Pierce can discuss the sources of air pollution and health effects from smoke, particulate matter and combustion byproducts. His research focuses on occupational and environmental exposures and risk assessments.
John Volckens, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Center for Energy Development and Health
Volckens’ research interests involve air quality, low-cost sensors, exposure science and air pollution-related disease. He is a founding member of the CSU Partnership for Air Quality, Climate and Health – an organization that seeks to develop practical, science-vetted solutions to intertwined problems of air quality, climate and health that we face as a society.
Climate and long-term fire outlook
Dan Cooley, professor in the Department of Statistics
Cooley has developed a statistical model showing that extreme wildfires like the ones seen in 2020 are more likely in Northern Colorado than ever before.
Alan Knapp, professor in the Department of Biology
Knapp leads a team that is currently studying global change ecology – especially the manipulations of precipitation extremes, and large-scale comparisons of ecosystem sensitivity to climate, fire, grazing and nutrients.
Dan McGrath, assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences
McGrath’s newly-published research has shown declines in peak snow water equivalent and elevated snowmelt rates following the 2020 Cameron Peak fire.
Russ Schumacher, Colorado State climatologist, and Becky Bolinger, assistant state climatologist
Schumacher and Bolinger lead the Colorado Climate Center, which is based in the Department of Atmospheric Science. They can share their insights on the short- and long-term western weather conditions that cause or sustain wildfires, as well as the outlook for new ignitions going forward.
Jason Sibold, professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography
Sibold studies the influence of weather, climate change, decades of fire suppression and bark beetles on wildfires. He can also discuss wildfires in the context of long-term patterns and the ecological role of natural wildfire events as identified from tree-ring records.
Melinda Smith, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology
Smith is researching how co-occurring droughts and deluges will impact carbon cycling across the vast grasslands of the continental U.S.
Disaster response and the long and short-term impact of fires
Ragan Adams, coordinator with the CSU Veterinary Extension group
Adams can share her insights on animal disaster response planning – particularly in the context of general emergency preparedness on personal and community levels.
Erika Osborne, professor in the Department of Art and Art History
Osborne’s artwork addresses the ways in which culture, history, ecology and aesthetics are enmeshed in western wildfire.
Jordan Suter, professor of agricultural and resource economics
Suter has researched the impact of wildfires on campground utilization, and his analyses have shown that fires can have negative impacts on reservations for up to six years after a fire occurs. He has also studied the dramatic consequences that wildfires can have on the provision of drinking waters to communities. His team is seeking to understand how drinking water quality and costs are influenced by wildfire events in upstream watersheds.
Shawn Whitney, licensed marriage and family therapist and instructor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Whitney can discuss the mental and emotional impacts of trauma, such as the loss of a home to a wildfire.
Jonathan Zhang, associate professor in the Department of Marketing
Zhang can offer insight about what businesses should and should not do after tragedies within their communities, and the special considerations involved with selling services to those who have undergone trauma. He can also speak to how insurance companies calculate risk in wildfire zones, and the ethics of insurance companies and governments providing wildfire mitigation on private property.
Colorado State Forest Service experts
The Colorado State Forest Service is based out of CSU and provides technical forestry assistance, wildfire mitigation expertise and outreach and education to help landowners and communities achieve their forest management goals.
Matt McCombs, Colorado State Forester
McCombs is Colorado’s state forester and the director of the Colorado State Forest Service, the agency responsible for the health and stewardship of Colorado’s forest lands. He is well versed in the various fire mitigation and recovery efforts the CSFS engages in around the state, along with all of the agency’s programs that support private land owners in managing forested acres. He oversees the production of Colorado’s annual Forest Health Report, and therefore can speak to forest health and management in the state, including utilization of federal funds distributed to the state from agencies including the U.S. Forest Service.
Daniel Beveridge, Colorado State Forest Service Fire, Fuels, & Watershed Manager
Cooperative fire programs with other agencies and states and pile burning in winter to reduce fuels resulting from forest management actions.
Kahla Montrose, Colorado State Forest Service Forestry Program Specialist
CSFS-administered competitive grants that help recipients address wildfire risk in Colorado.
Todd Ruffner, Colorado State Forest Service Wildfire Mitigation Program Specialist
Fire mitigation near homes and communities; Community Wildfire Protection Plans in Colorado; the Firewise Communities USA program; Fire Adapted Communities; and questions about CSFS outreach programs that address fire mitigation.
Amanda West Fordham, Colorado State Forest Service Associate Director of Science & Data, Nic Kotlinski, Colorado State Forest Service Geospatial Data & Analysis Program Manager
Colorado Wildfire Risk Viewer and Risk Reduction Planner, two apps in the Colorado Forest Atlas that provide wildfire risk assessment information and planning tools, at https://coloradoforestatlas.org.