Ernesto Alvarado

  • Research Associate Professor
    • 206-616-6920
  • Visit Ernesto's website

    • Ernesto Alvarado

    • Research Associate Professor

    Research areas

    Wildland fire science; fire ecology and management; combustion and fire behavior; carbon emissions; fire and climate change; quantitative modeling; international forestry; traditional ecological knowledge

    B.S., Agricultural Engineering with a minor in plant protection, Universidad Autonoma Chapingo, Chapingo, Mexico; M.S., Silviculture and Forest Management, Postgraduate College, Chapingo, Mexico; Ph.D., Wildland Fire Sciences, University of Washington

    Autumn 2026-27 Admissions: Please reach out to Professor Alvarado to inquire about their ability to admit new students.

    Courses

    • ESRM 420 | Wildland Fire Management (5) - Spring
    • SEFS 535 | Fire Ecology (4) - Autumn

    Current sponsored projects

    • Air Quality Impact and Community Health Burden from Large Wildfire Emissions

    • Integration of New Generation of 3-D Fuel Characterization, Physics-Based Fire Models, and Tree Mortality

    • Research to Improve Decision-Making Tools for Wildland Fire Air Quality Response and Fire Operations Programs

    • Research Support to Develop Applications to Support Decision Making in Fuel and Fire Management

    • Application of New Spatial Technologies to Advance Fuel Characterization, Combustion Models, and Fire Effects

    • Decision Support Tools for Smoke Management from Wildland Fires

    • Improving Estimates of Future Fires, Fire Emissions, and Smoke

    • Integration of Models and Information Systems for Improving Decision Making During Wildland Fire Smoke Episodes

    • Planning and Fuel Data for the Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE)

    • Quantifying the Effects of Variable Density Retention Salvage Logging on Forest Structure, Fuel Succession and Wildfire Behavior

    • Research on Fire, Fuels, Landscape Ecology, and the Wildland-Urban-Interface

    • Studies on Biomass Combustion and Wildland Fire Effects at Different Geospatial Scales

    Selected publications

    Zou, Y., O’Neill, S. M., Larkin, N. K., Alvarado, E. C., Solomon, R., Mass, C., … & Shen, H. (2019). Machine Learning-Based Integration of High-Resolution Wildfire Smoke Simulations and Observations for Regional Health Impact Assessment. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(12), 2137.

    Briones-Herrera, C. I., Vega-Nieva, D. J., Monjarás-Vega, N. A., Flores-Medina, F., Lopez-Serrano, P. M., Corral-Rivas, J. J., … & Arellano-Pérez, S. (2019). Modeling and Mapping Forest Fire Occurrence from Aboveground Carbon Density in Mexico. Forests, 10(5), 402.

    Guo, F., Ju, Y., Wang, G., Alvarado, E. C., Yang, X., Ma, Y., & Liu, A. (2018). Inorganic chemical composition of PM2. 5 emissions from the combustion of six main tree species in subtropical China. Atmospheric Environment, 189, 107-115.

    Podschwit, H., Larkin, N., Steel, E., Cullen, A., & Alvarado, E. (2018). Multi-Model Forecasts of Very-Large Fire Occurences during the End of the 21st Century. Climate, 6(4), 100.

    Krieger Filho, G. C., Bufacchi, P., Santos, J. C., Veras, C. A. G., Alvarado, E. C., Mell, W., & Carvalho, J. A. (2017). Probability of surface fire spread in Brazilian rainforest fuels from outdoor experimental measurements. European journal of forest research, 136(2), 217-232.