Fire Ecology and Wildfire Hazard Planning Minor

Offered at: San Luis Obispo Campus

This minor prepares students for the diverse, multi-disciplinary expertise needed to address the growing wildfire threat that societies throughout the world are facing, with a particular focus on California as a model system. The career expertise required to address the increasing threat of catastrophic wildfire spans many disciplines. This minor represents a key entry point for many students to tailor their major program in a way that provides an option to apply their undergraduate training to the rapidly growing number of career opportunities around wildfire management and hazard planning. Core coursework will give students an understanding around how fuel, weather and environmental features influence fire behavior, and the contemporary techniques and technology to control wildfire, as well as an understanding of the role of fire in ecosystem management. Beyond these core courses, students will have an opportunity to select between either a wildfire ecology track, focused on hands on and practical knowledge around fire ecology and fuels management, or a hazard planning track, focused on key elements of hazard planning and mitigation in fire prone communities. The wildfire ecology track will help prepare students for work in fuels and ecosystem management to enhance fire resilience in city, county, state and federal forest, rangeland, shrubland and other open space, as well as prepare students to work in the private sector providing technological and capacity solutions to meet wildfire management needs of different agencies. The hazard planning track will help prepare students for a range of work in the public and private sector space, including the design of policies and government functions to address wildfire threat as well as around contemporary approaches to hazard planning and mitigation across different public sectors.

Program Learning Objectives

1. Differentiate various techniques and tools utilized during wildfire suppression operations.
2. Describe characteristics of fire behavior and predict how differing fuels, weather, and topography will impact these characteristics.
3. Explain various human dimensions of living with wildfire and contrast how they vary between differing cultural and ethnic groups.
4. Identify various technologies utilized to manage wildfire and evaluate their appropriateness in various situations.
5. Analyze spatial data to classify elements of a fire environment in a given landscape.
6. Evaluate how manipulating elements of the fire environment impact fire behavior.

Minor Requirements and Curriculum

• At least half of the units must be from upper-division courses (3000-4000 level).
• At least half of the units must be taken at Cal Poly (in residence).
• No more than one-third of the units will be taken with credit-no credit grading (CR/NC), not counting courses with mandatory CR/NC. Departments may further limit CR/NC grading if desired.
• A minimum 2.0 GPA is required in all units counted for completion of the minor.