Prof
Rob Whelan, Dean of Science, University of Wollongong
At the University of Wollongong, Rob Whelan has developed a
research group focussing on two main research programs - fire
ecology and conservation biology. He has worked in these research
areas in eastern and western Australia, North America, the UK and
Brazil.
In 1995, he published a research
monograph The Ecology of Fire (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge), reviewing the ecological effects of fire in ecosystems
across the world.
Rob was a Council member of the
Ecological Society of Australia and editor of its journal (The
Australian Journal of Ecology) from 1984-'89, and then Vice
President of the Society from 1996-'99. He served on the Editorial
Board of Ecological Abstracts (Elsevier) from 1990-2000. He has had
several responsibilities for the Australian Research Council,
including the Research Training and Careers Committee (1995-'97),
the Discipline Review of the Biological Sciences (1997-'98) and the
Biological Sciences and Biotechnology Expert Advisory Committee
(2001-03).
He has served on a number of government advisory committees
including the NSW Govt. Forest Advisory Council (1996-2000) and the
National Parks Advisory Council (1997-current).
Sarah McCaffrey,
Research Social Scientist, USDA Forest Service
Sarah conducts and coordinates
research to better understand the social dynamics of fire
management. She is currently responsible for a National
Fire Plan grant examining social acceptability of fuels treatment
methods in the US. She has initiated almost two dozen studies
in a variety of ecological and geographical settings across the
country, examining a range of topics including what shapes
acceptability of prescribed fire and thinning, why people do or do
not implement defensible space practices, and social issues around
post-fire restoration. She has a part of the Fuels
Planning synthesis project, a national effort to synthesize current
scientific knowledge on fuels treatments from both the ecological
and social perspectives and provide it to managers in accessible
format.
Sarah is exploring issues around the social dynamics of fire
management. Possible research projects include biomass utilization,
effectiveness of initiatives to foster management across boundaries
such as The Nature Conservancy's Fire Learning Network, and issues
related to institutional knowledge and organizational
effectiveness. She also hopes to develop collaborative research
with scientists in other countries with wildfire issues.
Colin O'Loughlin, Consultant, Forestry and
Science
Colin has a background in forestry research, particularly in
forest hydrology and environmental forestry and management of
research organisations. In the late 1950s and 1960s he worked with
the Forest and Range Experiment Station researching hydrological
and erosion processes in the hill and high country of Canterbury
and other regions in New Zealand.
From 1987 until 1992 Colin was
responsible for the total performance of the Forest Research
Institute, NZ’s major forestry research organisation.
Since 1992 he has worked as a
private consultant in forestry and science in both New Zealand and
internationally. He has been on the Editorial Board of the New
Zealand Journal of Forestry for over a decade.
In 1998 he was appointed a
founding member of the New Zealand Fire Service’s Research
Advisory Committee which appraises research proposals for funding
from the New Zealand Fire Service’s research fund and makes
recommendations to the New Zealand Fire Commission concerning
proposals that are worthy of funding and the levels of funding that
should be allocated. He has continued to work in this role to
the present time. This work has provided him with a broad
understanding of problems and issues related to the prevention,
prediction and control of rural and urban fires and the impacts
fires inflict on individuals and communities. He is
particularly interested in the prevention, prediction and control
of forest fires.
Brian Stocks, President, B.J. Stocks
Wildfire Investigations
During the first 20
years of his career, Brian Stock's research activity covered many
aspects of forest fire research, but centred on field
investigations into the influence of fuels and weather on forest
fire behaviour and the development of the Canadian Forest Fire
Danger Rating System. Brian is the author or co-author of more than
130 scientific papers covering many aspects of forest fire and
global research. Over the past decade, Brian has become heavily
involved in cause-and-effect relationships between forest fire and
global change. This includes research into projecting boreal forest
fire regimes under a changing climate and investigations into the
impact of biomass burning on global atmospheric chemistry, studies
that require extensive cross-disciplinary international
cooperation.
Brian was the senior fire research
scientist within the Canadian Forest Service representing Canada on
the United Nations Team of Fire Specialists. He serves on biomass
burning and atmospheric chemistry steering committees of the
International Global Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Change and
Terrestrial Ecology projects of the International
Geosphere–Biosphere Program, chairs the Fire Research Section
of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, and
chairs the Fire Working Group of the International Boreal Forest
Research Association.
Ian Ferguson, Professor
Emeritus School of Forest
and Ecosystem Science, Faculty of Land and Food
Resources, University of
Melbourne
Teaching: Environmental management systems and policy; forest
economics, forest policy.
Research: Forest and environmental policy; management and
economics; biometry.
Other professional interests:
Fellow, Australian Academy of
Technological Sciences and Engineering
Fellow, Institute of Foresters of Australia
Fellow, Parks and Leisure, Australia
Fellow, Institute of Wood Science (U.K.)
Director, CRC Forestry Ltd 2005
Director, Tiaki Plantation Co (NZ) 2004-
Chair and Independent Director, Taswood Growers, 1999-2005
Director, Hancock Victorian Plantations Pty Ltd 1998-
Dep Chair and Director, Forests and Wood Products Corporation,
2000-2003
Dr Neil Burrows, Science
Director, Dept of Environment and Conservation, Western
Australia.
Dr Burrows has combined
interests in fire behaviour and fire ecology with feral
animals.
Dr Burrows is a member of the
Institute of Foresters of Australia, a member of the International
Association of Wildland Fire and member of the Royal Society of
Western Australia. He has worked for 25 years as a fire research
scientist in WA, researching the behaviour and some ecological
effects of bushfires in pine plantations, native forests and
banksia woodlands. In 1994, he completed a PhD at ANU on the
behaviour and impact of bushfires in jarrah forests. This research
contributed to bushfire management. In the 1990s, he studied the
behaviour and effects of fires in hummock grasslands of the Gibson
and Great Sandy Deserts and examined the use of fire by Aboriginal
people. This work was related to testing the hypothesis that
changed fires regimes contributed to mammal declines and
extinctions in the arid zone.
Dr Burrows has combined interests
in fire behaviour and fire ecology with feral animals and has
worked on a mammal reintroduction program in the Gibson Desert and
later on developing techniques for controlling feral cats.
Scott Stephens, Associate Professor of Fire
Sciences, ESPM Department - Division of Ecosystems
Sciences , University of California
Berkeley
Scott Stephen's is interested in
the interactions of wildland fire and ecosystems. This includes how
prehistoric fires once interacted with ecosystems, how current
wildland fires are affecting ecosystems, and how future fires and
management may change this interaction. He is also
interested in wildland fire policy and how it can be improved to
meet the challenges of the next decades. How fire will be affected
by climate change is a new area of his research.
Currently there is substantial debate on how or if land managers
should reduce fuel hazards or engage in salvage logging and have
given testimony on this topic on three occasions at the US House of
Representatives Subcommittee on Forest and Forest Health and
Subcommittee on National Parks and Public Lands. He believes the
central question in this debate is the definition of desired future
conditions for our diverse ecosystems. Once we have this then we
must decide what management tools are appropriate to achieve and
maintain the desired conditions.
Current Projects include work in
the Sierra San Pedro Martir Mountains, Mexico, the Sierra Nevada
Adaptive Management Project, and Fire and Fire Surrogates
Treatments for Ecological Restoration.
Max Moritz
Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist in Wildland
Fire and
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Environmental Science, Policy and Management
University of California,
Berkeley
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and
Management
Division of Ecosystem Sciences
Max Moritz's job as the Cooperative
Extension Specialist in Wildland Fire at UC
Berkeley is the first Cooperative Extension
position in the US that is completely focused on fire issues.
Max provides general leadership for the outreach and applied
research program within UC’s Division of Agriculture and
Natural Resources (ANR), and has been supported by the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, members of the State
Firesafe Council, the Fire Workgroup, and many others. Max
has broad expertise in fire modelling, fire effects, brushland fire
ecosystems and spatial patterns of fire disturbance.
Brian Richardson,
General Manager, SCION (New Zealand Forest
Research Institute Ltd)
Brian Richardson was the General Manager of Ensis Forest
Biosecurity and Protection whilst Ensis was an unincorporated joint
venture, and now Brian represents the New Zealand group that also
includes Forest sciences more broadly. The purpose of Forest
Biosecurity and protection science is to undertake research that
will help to protect forests from damage caused by insect pests,
pathogens, weeds, other biological agents, fire, and
wind.
Principal Fellow and Associate Professor David
Flinn
David Flinn commenced his career as a research scientist in the
Forests Commission Victoria before becoming Director of the Centre
for Forest Tree Technology (a Victorian Government Research
Institute) and inaugural Director of the Forest Science Centre
alliance between CFTT and the Department of Forestry of the
University of Melbourne.
He was also an Adjunct Professor of Forestry (University of
Melbourne). He retired in March 2000 to work as a private
consultant within Australia and assist the International Union of
Forest Research Organisations (UFRO).
He is the author of over 60
scientific publications and was awarded the Commonwealth Forestry
Association Medal (Asia-Pacific Region) in 2000 for excellence in
forest management.
