SEFS Research Associate Professor Ernesto Alvarado was a co-author on two recent publications that help forest managers assess risk from prescribed burns in California’s Central Sierra range. Co-author Joe Wilkins, Assistant Professor at Howard University, was a postdoc in Alvarado’s lab during the research. The team created a framework to help land managers assess the air quality implications of land management scenarios with varying levels of prescribed burning. Using models that estimate the smoke efforts on ecosystems and nearby communities, the researchers found that moderate amounts of burning would reduce overall smoke levels.
Their findings were published in Nature Sustainability and Environmental Research Letters in December 2023, and January 2024 respectively.