Fire and Forest Management Professional, Undergraduate Certificate

In addition to University Requirements:

• Complete individual plan requirements.

Students may be able to use some courses to meet more than one requirement. Contact your advisor for details.

Purpose Statement

This undergraduate certificate is designed to provide a strong background for working fire and natural resource professionals interested in studying fire or working in natural resources on fire management and general land management issues. The certificate is all online.

The content studied includes the basics physical and chemical properties of fire, fire effects on ecosystems, management issues surrounding wildland fire, fire behavior modeling and monitoring, and the interaction of climate, fire regimes, and management. Skills developed include developing and implementing a monitoring program related to fire effects, the use of several different fire behavior and fire effects models, writing a fire monitoring plan, and analyzing fire behavior outputs.

Student Learning Outcomes

• Understand the physical process of fire and factors that influence surface and crown fire spread, extreme fire behavior, and what fire danger rating is.
• Apply fire-related terminology to communicate fire behavior and fire effects through discussions and assignments.
• Apply fire models used in fire management to analyze potential fire behavior and fire effects through modeling exercises and lab write-ups.
• Understand fire regimes and fire effects in a variety of ecological systems and apply that knowledge by carrying out a research project independently.
• Understand the philosophical, historical, legal, ecological, social, and cultural aspects of land management and how that relates to fire management and practices they have seen on the ground.
• Understand monitoring, the adaptive management process, and the components of a monitoring program resulting in the creation of a monitoring plan.
• Understand sampling, variation, standard deviation, p-values, and hypothesis testing and apply those concepts to the development of a monitoring plan.
• Understand different types of experiments, independence, confounding factors, and the basics of experimental design and apply those concepts to the development of a monitoring plan.
• Understand different sampling methods and different federal fire monitoring programs that they can apply in their work.