MARIPOSA, CA — We are very excited to introduce the New Fire Advisor Alison Deak. Alison joined the University of California Cooperative Extension as a Fire Advisor based in Mariposa and also covering Madera and Fresno counties.
Allison Deak, UCCE Fire Advisor
Alison graduated from the University of Oregon with two Master’s degrees in Nonprofit Management and Geography. Her thesis research focused on modeling the long-term effects of prescribed fire on forests in the Siskiyou Mountains of Oregon and California.
Throughout graduate school, she worked as a research assistant at the Ecosystem Workforce Program, a natural resources-based social science institute at the University of Oregon, where she researched how organizations are working across boundaries to mitigate wildfire risk, the impacts of wildfire smoke on communities, and socioeconomic monitoring of landscape restoration projects.
Before graduate school, Alison worked as a wildland firefighter with the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
Alison is passionate about restoring fire-adapted ecosystems and empowering people through learning how to live with wildfire. She is focused on developing programming aimed at wildfire recovery on private lands, expanding the use of prescribed fire, and creating safer communities through defensible space and cost-effective home hardening techniques.
Across California, the University of California’s 64 Cooperative Extension offices are local problem-solving centers. We are the bridge between local issues and the power of UC research. Our county-based staff is part of the community – we live and work in the areas we serve.
More than 300 campus-based specialists and county-based farm, home, and youth advisors work as teams to bring practical, unbiased, science-based answers to solve problems across California.
