Follow along to my Wildfire Activity Mapping course this term via the Google folder below! We started class this week and went over basics for course structure and field prep. The course materials will populate as I deliver them to my students each week! Happy mapping! 😎🔥🗺️

Our op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican today highlights the potential losses from closure of the nine US Forest Service Regional Offices, namely local leadership knowledge and capacity, experienced people, and priceless documentary records: www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/my_v...

View of Lake Michigan from the Oak Leaf Trail on the south side of Milwaukee.

ICE is arresting contract firefighters on active wildfires. This is especially significant for the fire workforce in the PNW because of the heavy reliance on contract workforce. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

New Tenure Track Position in Data Science or Biostatistics with us here at MTU is live. We have great people here in a fantastic location that is probably a lot cooler (temperature-wise) than wherever you live during summer! www.employment.mtu.edu/en-us/job/49...

Tree-ring fire records from 649 pine trees in central and eastern Arizona show that fires occurred more often in the territory of the Western Apache, or Ndee, than in other regions between 1600–1870, suggesting a culturally controlled fire regime. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

New Mexico Magazine recommends THE JEMEZ MOUNTAINS by @firescar.bsky.social!

Two years after a wildfire took everything, Maui homeowners are facing a new threat: Foreclosure. grist.org/housing/two-... #Hawaii #Indigenous #Wildfire #Maui #Foreclosure #Fire

Thinking about the framing of this article and wondering how many historical and cultural sites and resources were inundated by this reservoir. How many communities did the lake destroy? www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

The University of Arizona is hiring a tenure-track Assistant/Associate Professor in Physical Geography! Research specialities could include wildfire, climate and water resources, and/or natural hazards, amongst others. Please apply and join us! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

I’m teaching a GIS course Fall 2025 on wildfire activity mapping. This class will be offered through the Prof and Continuing Edu program at Eastern Washington University and you don’t need to be an EWU student to enroll! Email or DM with questions or if you’d like the syllabus!

I'm heading to #esa2025 and I am on the job market! Looking for academic positions at SLACs and PUI's broadly where I could share my love of restoration ecology with undergrads in the classroom and in the lab! Send me your leads, or learn more about me from my website rpizza94.github.io/RileyPizza/

Was on the Olympic peninsula last week for some fieldwork and took some time for exploring Rialto Beach and areas in the Quinault Rainforest.

Yep. "Floods follow fires" is now a maxim. A good IC/Liaison Officer/PIO will not only work the fire, but help the community understand & prepare for the future flooding. Also, 3400 communities depend on national forests for drinking water & drinking watershed fires are some our most dreaded fires.

Interested in fire history, GIS, and community science? My lab presented at WAGISA in Tacoma last month on our work at Riverside State Park using GIS as both a teacher and a tool for improving wildfire resiliency in communities and restoring natural fire regimes. Check out the slides below! 👇

The Turkeyfeather Fire in the Gila Wilderness, NM has burned as a low-severity fire over about 24,000 acres (so far). This is a continuation of a fire regime that existed for millennia before the 20th century. This 🧵reviews the fire history of the Gila, as my colleagues and I have studied it. 1/18

I am a sucker for historical markers. I will pull over at ever single one. I have a goal to one day be involved in making one about fire or tree rings or GIS. 😅🤞

Lochsa River in Idaho along the Nez Perce Trail.

Lots of interesting points in this story, but I want to highlight the commendable work of Kurt Kipfmueller (U of MN) and Evan Larson (UW Platteville) in applying their tree-ring based research in collaborative projects with Tribal Nations across the Great Lakes region. www.mlive.com/environment/...

Now that’s a u shaped valley!

More than 17,000 acres around the Klamath River in Northern California have returned to the Yurok Tribe, completing the largest landback deal in California history. When the California gold rush began, the tribe lost 90% of its territory despite having lived along the Klamath for millennia.

🚀 Excited to share the draft Table of Contents for my upcoming book, "Introduction to GIS Programming: A Practical #Python Guide to Open Source Geospatial Tools." 📚 github.com/giswqs/intro... 📅 Aiming for a July 2025 release! Stay tuned!

From the central cascades in WA, here’s my #FireScarFriday, a beautiful example of fire suppression. I’m holding the outermost curl in my hand, and pointing to earlier scars that are just a few years apart! It also appears to be a CMT with old cut marks along the face. A beauty!

“Prior to Friday night storms, at least 29 people—including two children—were killed during flooding in February and April. Combined, at least 47 have died in the commonwealth so far this year because of punishing storm systems that have wreaked havoc across Kentucky.” From @heraldleader.bsky.social

Toxic wildfire pollution infiltrates homes of 1bn people a year, study finds #climatecrisis Story by me www.theguardian.com/environment/...

🚀 Excited to share a sneak peek of the latest #Leafmap feature: a new sidebar widget and layer manager for #MapLibre! 🌍 Now you can easily control layer visibility, opacity, style, and more with the interactive GUI. github.com/opengeos/lea... #geospatial #mapping #python

AFE beat me to the post! Excited to share this paper. We lived through these massive wildfires in 2014 and 2015 and can now share some lessons from them, including areas that have started to reburn.

Interested in coming to Canada for a postdoc? The new Canada Postdoctoral Research Award program now has details (there's additional $$ to recruit Black postdocs to Canada). So if you're interested in geohazards, remote sensing, GIS, etc send me a note 🧪⚒️❄️🏔️🛰️ www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etu...

My April Disasterology newsletter is out including a discussion about End Times Fascism, BRIC, FEMA Corps, the Review Council, voluntary buyouts, DOGE, the per capita indicator, and some questions for Cameron Hamilton at the end. disasterology.substack.com/p/diasterolo...

For #FireScarFriday is a sample from WA state. A unique remnant with approx 12 scars! I added in red lines so you can see where the scars are. This piece was sawed off the top of a stump that was cut long ago. I love how the scars and pith were preserved but not much else haha! 🌲🔥❤️

Happy May 1st. The value of your labor belongs to you and the actions of the state are best understood as as a coordinated effort to distract you from this. The state fears an organized and unified proletariat like it fears death and rightly so. Power to the workers and power to the people

Sunset last night between two lone surviving pines from a past high intensity fire. This area of Riverside SP has so much fire history. ❤️🔥🌲

My lab was accepted to our first GIS conference this year! Myself and a recent graduate will be presenting at WAGISA on our high-res fire history dataset, a community-focused and student-led project in Washington’s largest state park. 🌲🔥🗺️

I have written a small R-script to download all tree-ring data from the ITRDB (measurements and chronologies). Anyone can create a local copy, just in case the data might not be available anymore from @noaa.gov github.com/RonaldVisser... #dendrochronology #treering #opendata #share

📣We're recruiting! 📣 Katie Suding and I are looking for a postdoc interested in modelling grassland fire and fuels to contribute to an ongoing project on evaluating how grassland management and variation in fuels can impact wildfire risk around Boulder, CO. See the link below for more information.

DOGE was never about savings. It was always about surveillance. Over the weekend, we released new details—and now whistleblowers are coming forward too. What’s becoming clearer by the day: DOGE isn’t a government efficiency program. It’s a data weapon aimed at the American people.

Big news out of Spokane, where the Cowles family is donating the Spokesman-Review to a new community nonprofit. www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

On Mon 4/14 @ 4pm PT, I will have a special live session to discuss the rapidly unfolding, chaotic, & apparently intensifying actual & proposed cuts to NOAA & NASA that threaten to decimate weather & climate science & prediction in the U.S. See you then. youtube.com/live/mbt...

🗓️🔥 It’s Week 2 of our #FirePrepFriday series. This week, create a Go Bag for your pet(s). I started writing blog posts to accompany each week’s tasks, so please visit my website to read more details and find links to additional resources. www.kristaleewest.com/fireprepfrid...

Join @loridanielsubc.bsky.social and me this Thursday at UBC for an urgent convo: vancouversun.com/entertainmen...

“We have no plan B because we have no planet B.” Ban Ki-moon. I will talk about climate change in every single course I teach because it is relevant to everything.

This is your regular reminder that ALL buildings in California must build to seismic codes, but only those in CALFIRE's designated high hazard areas must build to WUI fire codes. Why the discrepancy? Who the hell knows...but it means the cycle of rebuild and burn again will continue.

I just updated my #Arctic sea-ice thickness and volume graphics for February 2025 using PIOMAS data: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i... This month was the 2nd lowest February volume on record. #SciComm #DataViz #OpenScience #OpenData

a must read: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/07/r...

A few students and I from the field last Friday. Gorgeous weather and a great crew mapping fire-scarred ponderosa pine.

Many forget that it's a complex & dangerous world as we have done a great job of making it safer, but we can't be complacent or allow the cultivation of intentional ignorance. In this line of work, one can't just rely on personal experiences. Education is critical. www.firehouse.com/operations-t...

NAFSE is excited to announce its Spring 2025 Student Webinar Series. The series will take place April 10th, 17th, and 24th. Students will share their work via webinar and connect with the fire and forestry community to establish productive working relationships. bit.ly/48tqLV8 for details.

The Pacific Institute has just released a major new assessment of the growing threat of catastrophic flooding in rural America, including the role that climate change plays, the vulnerability of rural communities, and the need to build resilience in these areas. pacinst.org/the-growing-...