Program Codes:
WFM
Minor
Demand for wildland firefighters is expected to grow in response to more intense and frequent wildfires, particularly at the urban-wildland interface. The U.S. Forest Service spends over $1 billion annually with 47 million homes at “high risk” of loss from wildfire.
The goal of this minor is to give students both the hard skills related to wildland firefighting, and the ecological and technological underpinnings to enter wildland firefighting careers.
This course is designed to introduce students to the variety of roles that fires play in the function of ecosystems around the U.S. and world, and how human actions modify those roles, ?for better or for worse.? Fire ecology is a multi-facetted, regionally- and contextually- variable topic, and fire management is a complex and evolving field. The focus of this class is on fires? ecological effects, but the course is also designed to integrate fire behavior and flame and smoke management topics covered in the National Wildfire Coordinating Group S-130 and S-190 courses to be taken concurrently, part of nationally-recognized wildland firefighter training certification (?red card?). Prerequisites: BIO 210 General Ecology or FOR 310 Forest Ecology Completes General Education Requirements: AR-I
Prereq: (BIO 210 Lecture Min Grade: D Min Credits: 4.00 Or FOR 310 Lecture Min Grade: D Min Credits: 3.00)
This course will introduce fundamental principles and concepts of remote sensing, and explore its applications specific to the environment and natural resource management. The course provides students with the basic theory to understand how and why remote sensing works, followed by a survey of remotely sensed data such as point clouds and imagery obtained from various platforms and portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. We will explore and obtain hands-on experience with how remotely sensed information can be used for applications such as land cover classification and wildfire mapping. Students will learn how to identify, obtain, process and interpret the appropriate remotely sensed data for various applications.
(2 hours lecture, 3 hours lab) Completes General Education Requirements:QP-l, AR-l.
GIS 201
MAT 210
GIS 350 Lab
Note: FOR 206 is a summer forestry block course.