Dr. Hudak recently completed a landscape-level forest biomass and carbon sequestration assessment using repeat field and lidar surveys. He’s expanding the scope of this work to examine relationships between forest canopy structure, wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and coupled carbon and water cycles. My collaborators and I are working to improve LiDAR data analysis capabilities for vegetation applications. I also work with other fire scientists to relate postfire effects to prefire fuels and active fire behavior on prescribed fires, where it's safe and logistically feasible to measure these variables before, during, and after the fire. An improved fundamental understanding of fire as a process will advance fire science and help fire managers make better decisions. I also study the effectiveness of fuel treatments for mitigating wildfire severity.