Ph.D. candidate Nitin Kumar holds a blow torch to a lab-made earth block.
Wildfire, in one way or another, touches nearly everyone who lives in California and, increasingly, the West.
This map illustration, showing the fire risk in California, is drawn from the state’s Fire Hazard Severity Zone map and USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Hazard Potential map.
Credit: Russ Thebaud/UC Davis
Those of us living in California last fall can recall awakening to orange skies and smoke that blanketed nearly the entire state. Even if our home was untouched, we experienced the effects of wildfire. We inhaled them. We swiped them off our car in white, singed flakes. We dread them now.