Integrating New Technologies into Wildland Fire Management

Integrating New Technologies into Wildland Fire Management

Christopher A. Dicus

Natural Resources Management Department

Cal Poly State University

San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

Email: cdicus@calpoly.edu

Wildland fire managers are challenged with an ever-increasing array of both responsibilities and critics. The traditional trials faced by fire managers are complicated by a consistently changing landscape, particularly a burgeoning urban-wildland interface. Further, land managers are confronted with a swelling tide of public antagonism from factions covering a spectrum of political ideologies and agendas. To effectively address these challenges, today's leaders must be equipped with the newest technologies.

These challenges have been embraced in the Fire & Fuels Management program of study at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo. Throughout their tenure in the program, students are perpetually immersed in an atmosphere where they must provide innovative and realistic solutions to real-world problems. This "learn by doing" philosophy is fostered in course assignments and projects that employ state-of-the-art technologies, including GIS and simulation modeling. This poster highlights the successes and lessons learned at Cal Poly, showing how emerging technologies are integrated into the curriculum to develop tomorrow's leaders in wildland fire management.

Christopher A. Dicus

Natural Resources Management Department

Cal Poly State University

San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

Email: cdicus@calpoly.edu

Copyright North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Dec 2003
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