Professor Matthew Clark and past GEP undergraduate students Corbin Matley and Michelle Villasenor worked with Masters graduate student Brianne Forbes and professor Lisa Bentley in Biology on a study to assess different forms of remote sensing technology to measure ladder fuels in forests of Sonoma County. Ladder fuels are vegetation in the lower canopy of forests that can allow a surface fire to spread to the upper canopy, which can then cause extensive damage to foliage and branches and kill trees that are not evolved to resprout. The researchers compared airborne and terrestrial laser scanners, multi-spectral images from drones, and a ground-based banner technique that uses camera photographs. Estimates of ladder fuels were compared to fire severity after the 2019 Kinkade and 2020 Glass fires at two sites. Read More
