Performance of organized FireSmart™ treated communities will be compared to untreated communities. Wild fire prediction, modelling, and risk prognosis. Discussion of soil moisture in treated community forests. Review resource allocation to fire suppression operation and the promises for new wildfire prevention measures. Implications for new construction of planned communities and applying FireSmart principles to existing communities. Controlled burns and methods of substitution for them in the Urban Interface. Growing issues of building and facility insurance. What can engineers and geoscientists do about urban interface fires in terms of design and operation covering FireSmart and building protection systems.
Professor, Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, University of British Columbia
Lori Daniels research strives to advance fundamental scientific knowledge on forest dynamics, which is imperative for conserving and managing contemporary forests and adapting to global environmental change. The research characterizes how natural disturbances, humans, and climate interact to drive temperate forest dynamics and resilience. It has produced three key contributions:
- The international collaborations demonstrate widespread tree mortality in North and South America, disentangling the relative impacts of drought, insects, and pathogens.
- Many forests in the Canadian Cordillera are increasingly susceptible to wildfire due to complex interactions among fire suppression, land-use and climatic change.
- The novel forest reconstructions include tree-ring methods adapted to address aboriginal cultural uses and traditional management, largely overlooked by forest managers.
The enduring partnerships with local to national governments, environmental organizations, forest management companies, community forests, and First Nations have helped translate these scientific advances to operational conservation, restoration, and management policies and practices.
Bruce has more than 30 years experience as a professional forester and biologist primarily focused in fire and forest ecology, silviculture, vegetation management, wildland/urban interface planning, forest policy, and practice audits and reviews. Bruce is considered a provincial expert in fire and fuels management and has managed numerous innovative projects related to fire risk identification and mitigation for both the public and private sector. He has provided expert opinion testimony and numerous interviews on the topic of wildfire in BC. Bruce assisted the Firestorm 2003 Review Team in the development of recommendations on forest management and policy to mitigate the risk of catastrophic fires in the wildland/urban interface of BC. He has also applied his expertise in developing numerous wildfire community protection plans and wildfire risk assessments, risk management systems, fuel treatment prescriptions, and fire management plans. Bruce's silviculture experience includes preparation of silviculture and stand management prescriptions. He has extensive experience in the assessment and auditing of soil disturbance and has developed and delivered a comprehensive training package on the subject to coastal and interior clients. In addition, he has applied the biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification to ecosystem description and classification to a number of studies related to forest productivity and forest succession. Bruce has an extensive background in forest management policy development, strategic planning, management and research with over 25 published and peer reviewed reports to his credit.
