Two Fires, One Stone: Identifying Co-benefits of Optimizing Alaska Fire Management for Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator – Kate Hayes
PI Location – UAF
Ambassador Cohort – 2026
Project Summary
This project develops a data-driven framework to help Alaska fire managers make strategic decisions that deliver multiple climate-adaptation benefits. By identifying where high-value resources, like carbon-rich permafrost, wildlife habitat, and cultural sites, overlap, and modeling how updated fire designations would affect future carbon, forests, and fire behavior, the project highlights “hotspots” where a single action could yield major co-benefits. Understanding where there is overlap could potentially help fire managers make better decisions about fire suppression efforts in the future.