Fire Ecology and Management, Undergraduate Certificate

Overview

In addition to University Requirements:

• Complete individual plan requirements.

Please note that 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 students and working fire professionals interested in studying fire or working in natural resources on fire management and general land management issues.

The content studied includes the basics physical and chemical properties of fire, fire effects on ecoystems, 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 fuels specialist report and a fire monitoring plan.  Professionals in the field of fire behavior, fire ecology and fire management will be part of classes and opportunities for students to develop professionally.  Completion of this certificate with the Forestry B.S. degree meets the academic qualifications for the Fire Ecologist Certification through the Association for Fire Ecology.

Student Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this certificate, students will have:

• An understanding of the physical process of fire and factors that influence surface and crown fire spread, extreme fire behavior and what fire danger rating is.
• An understanding and the basic use of terminology and fire models used in fire management
• An understanding of fire regimes and fire effects in a variety of ecological systems
• An understanding of the philosophical, historical, legal, ecological, social and cultural aspects of land management and how that relates to fire management.
• An understanding of monitoring, the adaptive management process, and the components of a monitoring program.
• An understanding of sampling, variation, standard deviation, p-values and hypothesis testing
• An understanding of different types of experiments, independence, confounding factors and the basics of experimental design
• An understanding of different sampling methods and different federal fire monitoring programs