UBC Okanagan student’s research aimed at mitigating wildfire risks

A scientist at UBC Okanagan studying wildfire fuel mitigation is trying to make a difference when it comes to making communities safe from the often devastating blazes.

Ian Parfitt is part of the Earth, Observation and Spacial Ecology Lab at UBCO run by his Ph.D. supervisor Mathieu Bourbonnais.

“What we’re looking at is essentially how forest fire fuels are distributed across the landscape and that can help better understand the risk of a fire starting, and then the behaviour of a fire once it’s burning,” Parfitt says.

“Forest fuel is the live and dead plant material in the forest, it’s often thought of onto the different vertical layers from the canopy down to the ground and I’m mostly focused on the near-ground fuels like the surface fuels between the ground and about two meters high. Stuff like the leaves and fallen branches, smaller vegetation that, because it’s quite small, can dry quickly and burn quickly.”

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This research will hopefully allow better prediction and mitigation of wildfires.

“The main focus of a lot of the fuel mapping work is how it can be used in the next generation of fire behaviour models – simulation models,” he says.

“Having a better sense of what’s going on with all of the fuels can help when you look at where to spend money on reducing fuels, mitigating fuel risk, and when working with communities and their local fire departments we can help them focus their efforts on fuel reduction.”

This kind of community impact Parfitt’s research will have is what inspired UBCO's Public Scholars Initiative and it is what attracted Parfitt to the program.

“I like the philosophy about taking research out of the university and having some public impact with the work,” Parfitt says. “Ph.D. research doesn’t always have a focus on how the research results actually get implemented in the community, and the fact that PSI was attracted to that, spoke to me.”

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