Episode IV: Questioning Current Wildfire Wisdom with Kim Sorvig

“The younger bracket of people, the demographic that is coming into power…they may actually have more practical impact on this whole issue than all of us aging idealists, the ex-hippies who didn’t believe in cars and so on.” Kim Sorvig  

We hear a somewhat controversial perspective on managing fire risk around homes and properties. We discuss a compelling solution: transitional landscape from human habitation to transitional spaces and then into forest. 

Our guest, Kim Sorvig, is a research associate professor at the University of New Mexico and a George Pearl fellow, which is an honor given to professionals whose work encourages discourse and positive change in architecture, planning, and historic preservation. He is the author of Sustainable Landscape Construction.

Read an excerpt from Sustainable Landscape Construction, Third Edition, Principle 2: Heal Injured Soils and Sites: Restore Forests and Coexist with Wildfire

Pacific Horticulture members receive a 25% discount on all Island Press publications. Members can find the code in our Member Portal.

This episode was sponsored by:

GARDEN FUTURIST  

A show about innovative thinkers contributing to a climate resilient future through the power of gardens.

Produced and hosted by Sarah Beck, Adriana Lopez, and Adrienne St Claire 

Edited and directed by Kelsey Skonberg 

Sarah Beck is the executive director of Pacific Horticulture.

Adriana López-Villalobos currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where she works as Curatorial Coordinator for the UBC Botanical Garden. She is originally from Mexico, where she completed her BSC and MSc, studying plant ecology and mating systems evolution, before migrating to Canada to pursue a PhD focusing on the genetics of species across their geographic ranges.

Adrienne St. Clair is a botanist working with Metro, a regional government in Portland, Oregon where her work spans conservation to restoration. Adrienne managed a native plant nursery for almost a decade before pursuing a graduate degree. She received her Master’s in Plant Biology and Conservation from Northwestern University and Chicago Botanic Garden where she studied the effect of horticulture techniques on native-plant genetics.

Kelsey Skonberg is a Community-Centered Video and Podcast Editor and Science Journalist in Everett, WA.