Chauncy Harris Lecture
"Wildfire Challenges in California and the West: Present, Future and Past Perspectives"
Since the 1980s California has seen a significant long-term trend in annual area burned by wildfires. In some vegetation formations the severity of wildfires has also increased. The destructiveness of wildfires in terms of infrastructure, health and human mortality has been stunning and resulted in significant socioeconomic challenges. The pattern of increasing annual area burned and the toll of wildfires on people is not limited to California, but is being experienced over much of the western United States and adjacent Canada. This presentation will examine this trajectory since the 1980s and consider potential climatic and non-climatic drivers. Projections of future wildfire regime trajectories over the 21st century suggest the potential of increasing challenges ahead. Examination of paleoenvironmental records indicate that the current fire regime in California, and that of the past 11,000 years, is unlike anything experienced in the past 32,000 To 140,000 years.
Glen MacDonald, FRSC
Distinguished Professor and Endowed Chair in California & the American West at UCLA’s Department of Geography
Director of the UC White Mountain Research Center
Chair of the UCLA Canadian Studies Program
Glen Sproul dit MacDonald is a Distinguished Professor and holds the Endowed Chair in Geography of California and the American West at UCLA. He works on issues of sustainability and climatic and environmental change. He examines sustainability challenges on ecosystems, natural resources, and human societies. Some specific research interests include water resources and the Perfect Drought concept, the fate of coastal wetlands in the face of sea level rise, California’s increasing wildfire risks, and nature-based climate solutions. Glen has done work on the geography of COVID-19 and responses to the pandemic in the United States. He is particularly interested in bridging science and policy.
Glen has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and an award-winning book on biogeography. He has also published opinion articles in the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Sacramento Bee. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Guggenheim Fellow, and was a Visiting Global Fellow at the University of St Andrews, a Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow and Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. He holds an AB in Geography from UC Berkeley, M.Sc. in Geography from the University of Calgary and a Ph.D. in Botany with a Geology Minor from the University of Toronto.
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