Andrea Thode

Andi Thode grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was the high desert and mountain landscapes of northern New Mexico that originally interested Andi in the field of fire ecology, which eventually led to her current research on landscape scale patterns of fire. From New Mexico, Andi moved to California to attend the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) where she completed her B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management in 1996. After graduation, Andi worked as a GIS analyst for the Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at UC Davis on watershed and water quality issues. Through her experiences with ICE she was able to be a founding board member of the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE). Through different AFE projects she was able to refine her interests and decided to work towards her Ph.D. in fire ecology through the Ecology Graduate Group at UC Davis. In 2001, while in school, Andi started working as a fire ecologist for the Pacific Southwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service through the Student Career Employment Program. Officially, Andi worked for the regional office, the Eldorado National Forest and then the Tahoe National forest while starting and running a landscape monitoring program for 12 National Forests using burn severity mapping. In addition, Andi helped to re-develop and teach the Fire Effects class for the region. Andi finished her PhD in 2005 and left the U.S Forest Service to work at Northern Arizona University (NAU). She is currently an assistant professor of fire ecology and fire science in the School of Forestry at NAU. Andi also continues her work with AFE as a board member and education committee member.

Andi received her B.S. in Environmental Biology and Management from UC Davis in 1996. She received her PhD in Ecology from UC Davis in 2005.