Coupled Hazard Modeling for Rural and Gateway Communities
Wildfire in the American West is increasingly understood not as an isolated natural event but as a coupled phenomenon — one that links atmospheric dynamics, landscape processes, and human communities in ways that create cascading risks. Rural and gateway communities in Wyoming and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are among the most exposed to these dynamics: economically dependent on outdoor recreation and natural amenities, geographically isolated, and often lacking the institutional capacity of larger urban centers to absorb and recover from disruption.
This project develops modeling frameworks that treat wildfire and its consequences as a coupled human-Earth system problem. The scientific goal is to improve how fire behavior, atmospheric conditions, and community-level social processes are represented together — moving beyond approaches that model the physical and human dimensions of fire in isolation. This includes integrating climate and atmospheric modeling with frameworks that capture how communities perceive, respond to, and recover from disturbance events.
A central application focus is scenario planning. By linking model outputs to structured decision-support frameworks, the work aims to give land managers, emergency planners, and community leaders in the GYE region better tools for thinking through how future fire environments might unfold — and where investments in preparedness, adaptation, and infrastructure would be most effective. Scenarios are developed with practitioner input to ensure they address the decision contexts that matter most on the ground.
The project builds on close collaboration across atmospheric science, forest ecology, social science, and regional planning, reflecting the view that meaningful progress on the human dimensions of wildfire requires coupling not just models but disciplines.
This project is currently seeking funding. If you are interested in learning more or discussing collaboration, please reach out to Jake.