Scott L. Stephens

Research Bio

Scott Stephens is a fire ecologist whose research investigates forest ecology, wildfire behavior, and ecosystem management. He is best known for his studies on the ecological role of fire in forested landscapes and for developing strategies to promote fire resilience in California and beyond. Stephens’s research integrates ecology, forestry, and climate science to understand how fire regimes interact with forest structure and management. His work informs policies for sustainable forest management.

Stephens has given testimony on fire and forest policy at the US House of Representatives, the White House, California Assembly and Senate, California Governor’s office, and severed on the 2024 US Wildfire Commission. He is on the Board of Directors of the Climate Wildfire Institute and is one of the leaders of The Stewardship Project which is a partnership of Indigenous people and western science to improve federal fire policy. He was selected in the Top 1% of Researchers Worldwide in 2024 (https://clarivate.com/highly-cited-researchers/)

Research Expertise and Interest

fire, forestry, fire ecology, fire behavior, environmental biology/ecology, forest policy

In the News

How wildfire restored a Yosemite watershed

Scott Stephens is the senior author of a new study that gathers together decades of research documenting how the return of wildfire has shaped the ecology of Yosemite National Park’s Illilouette Creek Basin and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ Sugarloaf Creek Basin since the parks adopted policies for the basins to allow lightning-ignited fires to burn.

Let it burn: Prescribed fires pose little danger to forest ecology, study says

UC Berkeley-led research is giving the green light to fighting fire with fire. An analysis of controlled burns and mechanical thinning nationwide did not find substantial ecological harm from fuel-reduction treatments used to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. And with a rise in wildfires predicted in many parts of the country, researchers say more treatments are needed to manage this risk.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
February 6, 2024

Restoration thinning, prescribed burns can reduce risk of massive fires, study shows

NBC Bay Area

Scott Stephens, a professor at the Rausser College of Natural Resources, discusses new research on prescribed burns. The research was featured on Berkeley News.

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September 29, 2021

Scientists Are Racing to Save Sequoias

NPR
Scott Stephens, a professor of environmental science, policy and management at Berkeley and co-director of Berkeley Forests, joins SHORT WAVE, the daily science podcast from NPR with an urgent message: They've been here 1,500 years, and each tree maybe survived 60, 70, 80 fires. That's incredible. And then one fire comes in 2020. And all of a sudden, they're gone. That is a travesty. Unless we see some regeneration at some of these sites, my goodness, you're not going to see sequoia here.
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September 16, 2020

How To Keep California's Forests Healthy and Reduce Fires

KQED
Michael Krasny
As wildfires get bigger, more frequent and more dangerous, experts predict there will be no easing off unless the state and federal government spend billions of dollars on forest management, a reversal of decades-long policies of forest preservation. Listen as UC Berkeley professor of fire science, Scott Stephens joins other experts in talking about how to reduce fires in the coming years.
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