Following up on the October 2 event, SLAGC curated another, equally diverse range of experts to present at the October 10 lunch.

Some of the presentations built on the topics of the previous event—like the role urban trees played in the dynamics of fire spread in January 2025—while others introduced new topics, like the impact of the fires on education and service access of children in foster care.

Alex Hall, faculty director SLAGC and director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES), welcomed attendees with opening remarks underlining the importance of interdisciplinary conversations and the role SLAGC plays in building bridges to that end.

Next up was Edith de Guzman, a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources water equity and adaptation policy cooperative extension specialist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Luskin Center for Innovation.

She presented a range of work she has been involved with, including the Blue Ribbon Commission and the Water Supply + Wildfire Research and Policy Coordination Network. She also talked about her work measuring the impacts of the fires on urban tree canopy and how that relates to damage to structures.

De Guzman was followed by Morgan Tingley, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He presented his ongoing efforts monitoring the vegetation and wildlife recovery post fire, as well as the work he is doing investigating the impacts of smoke during and after the fires on birds. 

He specifically mentioned his collaboration with Project Phoenix, a community science project supported by the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which aims to leverage birdwatchers of all levels to learn more about how wildfire smoke impacts West Coast birds.

Next up was Idil D. Akin, associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, who presented on her work investigating slope stability in the wake of the fires and the development of a landslide risk model.

Following Akin, Taylor Dudley, executive director of the Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families presented with Olivia Gilchrist, an undergraduate student researcher on the disruption of education for children in foster care caused by the fire, and considerations of responses needed to address the effects of these disruptions.

Their work specifically tackles three main questions:

• How did the destruction caused by the Eaton Fire disrupt access to education and physically displace children in foster care, and what are the consequences of these disruptions?
• How did the Eaton Fire contribute to relational disruptions for children in foster care?
• What do schools and child welfare agencies need to do to address educational fallout resulting from the Eaton Fire in the coming years?

On October 29, Dudley and Gilchrist released a brief of their forthcoming report, “The Aftermath of the Eaton Fire: Foster Care and Education Disrupted.”

• Read the report brief.

Ertugrul Taciroglu, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, concluded the October 10 session with a rapid-fire overview of the various avenues of research he has been working on. 

These efforts ranged from publicly-available datasets collected in the Eaton and Palisades burn zones immediately following the fires, to leveraging observational data for improved vegetation models necessary for more accurately modeling how fire spreads in urban contexts. His team is also developing a comprehensive platform that brings together these projects with evacuation and mitigation scenario-planning capacity.  

• Read about the October 2 event.
• Read about the October 23 event.

Listen to the researchers discuss their work: