PhD project: The Biogeography of Fire: Mapping Key Fuel Types Across NSW
Kathryn is pursuing a PhD at Western Sydney University- Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment. She has a background in ecology and biological sciences and received her Masters of Science by research from Auburn University.
Kathryn’s PhD thesis will describe new approaches to modeling bushfire fuels at landscape to sub-continental scales. Her focus is on quantifying the relationships between key fuel attributes, stand composition, biophysical drivers and their impacts on fire severity. The primary goals of her PhD thesis are to determine what environmental factors most strongly influence the formation of fuel types, develop a fuel model to predict three-dimensional fuel heterogeneity on the New South Wales landscape and incorporate these into a unified model to better predict fire severity in order to inform bushfire management decision making.
