Karen Short

Research Ecologist
karen.c.short@usda.gov
(406) 329-4973

Research Topics

  • Wildfire hazard and risk assessment
  • Hazardous fuel treatments and risk mitigation
  • Foundational geospatial datasets for wildland fire science and management

Personal Summary

Karen's current work focuses on wildfire risk science and applications, including development of national products used in research and management.

Current projects include:

  • Wildfire risk assessment and fuelbreak/fuel treatment scenarios for the sagebrush biome
  • FPA FOD: A spatial wildfire occurrence dataset for the US (6th edition)
  • ICS-209-PLUS: An all-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System (2nd edition)

Selected Publications & Products

Lise A. St. Denis, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Karen C. Short, Mollie Buckland, Jennifer K. Balch: All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999–2014

Short, Karen C. 2017. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2015 [FPA_FOD_20170508]. 4th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive.

Short, Karen C.; Finney, Mark A.; Scott, Joe H.; Gilbertson-Day, Julie W.; Grenfell, Isaac C. 2016. Spatial dataset of probabilistic wildfire risk components for the conterminous United States. 1st Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive.

Short, Karen C. 2015. Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data. International Journal of Wildland Fire.

Short, K. C. 2014. A spatial database of wildfires in the United States, 1992-2011. Earth System Science Data. 6: 1-27.

Images

Karen Short working in the field.
Karen Short working in the field.