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Every year, wildfires burn through woods and meadows, trees and grass, scorching pines, firs and shrubs. At times, the blazes reach into residential areas as firefighters struggle to contain them, and researchers try to find better ways to respond.

The financial costs of wildfires add up to $ 1 billion or more every year, while the damage done to people, communities and ecosystems is more difficult to quantify. A new method for predicting the potential effects and characteristics of fires that a Penn State professor and graduate student recently tested has the potential to help fire managers better plan for how fires will behave in the long term and help them decide how to respond.

Known as “Random Forest,” the statistical modeling approach Alan Taylor, professor of geography, studied and found to be effective is anything but random. Instead, the method crunches large amounts of data — on the slope, soil, vegetation and fuels in field plots — and uses an algorithm to develop a model to predict where different types of fuel that influence fire behavior occur across a landscape.

Source: Centre Daily Times

by Cindy Melanson

Our spring semester Environmental Science Colloquium will be held on Wednesday afternoons from 4-5 pm at the Boyd Science Center, Room 001. The talks cover a wide range of topics around environmental science and sustainability. The colloquium is available for graduate credit and we also invite the community to come for free. For more information, contact Angela Uhlman . Read on for the complete list of dates and speakers.

Source: This Week @ PSU » Blog Archive » Environmental Science ...

by Matthew Swayne-Penn State

The study, from Penn State , shows that mothers who do not have enough money to provide adequate food for their families—food-insecure—are more likely to be obese or overweight than fathers who face food shortages, as well as food-insecure, childless women and men, says Molly Martin, assistant professor of sociology and demography.

Over time, these food-insecure mothers also gain more weight compared to all food-insecure men and food-insecure women not caring for children.

“We often forget that food insecurity is happening in a country as rich as ours,” says Martin. “Trying to protect children from food insecurity is not as rare as it once was, and it’s been on the rise for the last two years, if not the last five years.”

Mothers, who are often the food managers in the household, may take several actions to ensure that their children are fed, including skipping meals, and eating cheaper, but less nutritious foods.

“To make sure mothers can provide for their children, they may eat only once a day, for example, or they may eat erratically, which are all behaviors that are obesity risks,” says Adam Lippert, graduate student in sociology, who worked with Martin.

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