Zack Holden graduated from Oberlin College in 1996 with a degree in
biology. After serving as a Peace Corp volunteer in West Africa he
worked as a biologist for the National Park Service. Zack completed
both his MS and PhD degrees at the University of Idaho working with
Dr. Penny Morgan.
His MS research focused on the effects of historical wildland fire
use in wilderness areas of the southwestern U.S. For his PhD, he
related patterns of burn severity at local and regional scales to
climate, landscape and vegetation patterns. Using time series’ of
Landsat-derived burn severity images, Zack has developed models to
predict the topographic and vegetation characteristics associated
with where severe fires tend to occur. He and colleagues integrated
the results of their research with models developed by hydrologists
and fish biologists at the Boise RMRS to predict and map endangered
fish populations threatened by severe fire and post-fire erosion in
the Gila Wilderness.
He is currently a Research Scientist based at the Fire Sciences Lab
in Missoula where he works with Emily Heyerdahl (Missoula), Penny
Morgan (Moscow) and Charlie Luce (Boise). There, he is relating
west-wide patterns in burn severity to climate, topography, and
vegetation
The
University of Idaho College of Natural Resources builds upon it's strong
educational background with an impressive interdisciplinary approach to
wildland fire research. We challenge our students with innovative research
projects that provide useful, timely and sound scientific input to help
solve fire management issues across the state, region and nation. We provide
our students with the opportunity to collaborate with top researchers both
here at the University of Idaho and across the nation. There are currently
16 faculty members and more than 25 graduate students conducting research in
diverse areas such as fire ecology, fuels management, fire risk and remote
sensing of fire behavior and effects. Over the last five years our faculty
have received over 6 million dollars in grants and contracts to conduct
wildland fire research and have had more than 100 refereed journal
publications in the last 10 years.
