Wildland Fire Engineering

Course Overview

Wildland fires are both a natural part of Earth’s ecosystem and a destructive force that devastates people and the environment. This course will present an introduction to the global problem of wildland fire starting with the drivers of destructive wildfire: fire exclusion, expansion in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and climate change. The basic phenomena that control wildland fires including, ignition, fire spread, suppression, crown fires, smoke generation, hazard and risk analysis, the interplay with fire ecology, etc. will be covered. A specific focus of the course will be on the science, technology and applications engineers use to predict, prevent, detect, and suppress wildland fires.