On Dec. 30, 2021, a grass-fueled wildfire in suburban Boulder County became the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. The Marshall Fire spurred 精品SM在线影片 researchers from across campus鈥攎any of them personally affected by the fire鈥�to pivot and apply their expertise to the aftermath. 精品SM在线影片 experts are available to discuss their ongoing research and projects related to the fire one year later.聽
Air Quality聽
, professor of chemistry and fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), leads a research team that has been investigating impacts of the fire on air quality and, in particular, the air quality inside homes in the path of the fire that did not burn.聽
Water Quality聽
Cresten Mansfeldt, assistant professor of environmental engineering, has led a small team of researchers at 精品SM在线影片 to measure impacts on local water quality in the Coal Creek waterway and ecosystem in the wake of the fire. The development of many community partnerships in parallel to this work also led to the detailing all of the results from the campaign.聽
Engineering
Brad Wham, assistant research professor in the 聽Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is an engineer who studies how water pipelines and other 鈥渓ifelines鈥� can maintain their functionality during natural hazards, such as earthquakes and wildfires. In 2022, he co-led a team that studied the impacts of the Marshall Fire on buildings and infrastructure to understand how engineers can mitigate and prevent losses in the future. 聽
Grassland Management
Katharine Suding is a professor of distinction in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).聽She is working on ways to reduce grassland fire risk without sacrificing important other benefits of grasslands, biodiversity and soil carbon storage, including several pilot projects in the Boulder County area.聽