Email: thittenb@berkeley.edu

Hometown: Petaluma, CA

 
I am interested in the use of fire in managing ecosystems representative of the central California coast range as a means of both ecological stewardship and maintaining healthy human communities. My research specifically focuses on the effects of prescribed fire as a first entry treatment in coast redwood forests in Sonoma and Marin counties. Once marked by frequent, low intensity fires, legacy timber harvesting and fire suppression in these forests have now significantly altered fuel loading dynamics and species composition, putting them at risk of high severity fire atypical of their historic fire regime.