As Los Angeles battles devastating wildfires, a world expert on the subject will be giving a public lecture about his work at Swansea University on 23 January, marking 70 years of the University’s geography department.
The topic will be ‘Climate change and the global ‘wildfire crisis’ – unravelling myths from realities’ and the speaker is Professor Stefan Doerr.
Professor Doerr is based in the geography department at Swansea University. He is professor of wildland fire science, studying the effects of fire on landscape, soils and water, as well as global fire patterns and trends. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
As a world authority on wildfires, he has given expert comment widely in the UK and international media on the fires in Los Angeles and other places.
He was recently awarded the prestigious Murchison award by the Royal Geographical Society for his global expertise in understanding wildfires.
Professor Doerr’s lecture is open to all.
· Thursday 23 January
· Starts at 6.30pm – ends at 7.45
· Wallace Building, Singleton Campus, Swansea University SA2 8PP
· Free of charge and open to all
· Places must be reserved in advance by booking here
Over the last 70 years, between 20,000 and 25,000 students have graduated from the department of geography at Swansea University.
In its early days the department’s interests were largely focused on physical geography and cartography. Today, its research interests are more diverse and range from cultural, social and economic geography to climate and environmental change, glaciology, and earth observation.
The department now offers distinct Physical and Human Geography schemes as well as Environmental Geoscience and Environmental Science and the Climate Emergency programmes. It offers postgraduate taught schemes as well as a significant percentage of Welsh-language modules.
Field courses remain a highlight of geography study. Over the years Swansea students have gone to Devon, Cornwall, Isle of Mann, Ireland, Austria, Mallorca, Vancouver, New York, Borneo and Sikkim. In a few months, Geography students will be heading to Iceland, the Isles of Scilly, Berlin, Vancouver and the Eifel region of Germany.
Dr Angharad Closs Stephens, head of the geography department at Swansea University, said:
“Wildfires are one of the major issues of our time and this lecture is a unique opportunity for the public to hear from one of the world’s leading experts. It is open to all.
Professor Doerr’s lecture and his research is the latest example of how – over the past 70 years – geography at Swansea has been focused on understanding issues of enormous importance.
From the 1960s, when Swansea geographers played a central role in the Lower Swansea Valley Project, a pioneering initiative that reclaimed the area from its post-industrial devastation, paving the way for the regeneration that we see there today, to projects improving climate and weather predictions, and understanding what is happening in polar regions today, our work has both a local and global impact”.
The geography department undertakes world-leading research through a range of platforms and ventures, including the NERC CLASSIC centre in Earth Observation, the Jotunheimen expedition, the Millennium project, the Centre for Migration Policy Research, the South East Asian Rainforest Research Partnership in Danum, the Climate Action Research Institute and most recently the Centre for Wildfire Research led by Professor Stefan Doerr.
