News:

January 2020:

I will be teaching Lichens of the Bay Area again virtually via Merritt College March-May 2021. Learn more about their program and enroll here.

September 2020:

I was elected board president of Capital Science Communicators (CapSciComm), our Sacramento region science communication networking and social group. Check out our organization here.

March 2020:

• My dissertation chapter about hiker perceptions of wildfire was published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire! (it was later selected by the journal to be made open access, so you can read it now by clicking here!)
• I taught Lichens of the Bay Area through Merritt College. The class went virtual after one class meeting, and I hope to eventually share some of my lichen course materials on this site.

March 2019:

I started working as Outreach Coordinator for the USGS Western Ecological Research Center. Do note from here on out that absolutely nothing on this website represents the opinions of the government in any way, shape, or form!

November 2018:

I completed my PhD in Ecology at UC Davis! Stay tuned for what’s next!

June 2018:

I’m in the process of merging my personal webpage with my blog page! What We Talk About When We Talk About Fire (Talk About Fire) is still here as always–just click on “Talk About Fire Blog.” In the next week I plan to transfer the content of my old website (http://amweill.weebly.com/) to this site.

April 2018:

I was selected as a 2018 AAAS Mass Media Fellow and will be working on science journalism and media production at KQED this summer! If you’ve enjoyed my writing on this blog, stay tuned for my clips on KQED Science!

About:

I’m a fire ecologist and science communicator. I did my PhD in Ecology at UC Davis and was an AAAS Mass Media Fellow at KQED in 2018. My research focuses on the causes and consequences of changing fire regimes in Mediterranean shrublands for both plants, people, and lichens. I love to write and teach about all kinds of science, but I’m most excited about topics related to wildfire. Other interests include environmental history, paleoecology, and paleobotany.

About Talk About Fire Blog

My blog focuses on ecological research, science communication, and science education, especially topics related to wildfire. It attempts to present fire science (and sometimes other areas of ecology) in a larger context and discuss the ways we research, talk about, and interact with fire-prone ecosystems.

If you study fire or other topics relevant to the blog and are interested in writing a guest post, please send an e-mail to amweill@ucdavis.edu.