The impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, with wildfire seasons getting longer and more severe and flooding occurring more frequently. Colorado has experienced significant extreme weather events in the last ten years and, consequently, has begun a statewide effort to incorporate resilience into short- and long-term planning across state and local governments. As cities and counties undergo resilience planning processes, today’s students (tomorrow’s leaders) are often unaware of these efforts and are left out of the planning process. The HEART Force curriculum empowers students with the knowledge needed to participate (and lead) the resilience conversation in their own community, with place-based hazard education that includes a scenario-based role-play game and design thinking to create resilience strategies in their community. The curricular unit culminates with a resilience expo, where students engage with community members as resilience experts and share their ideas. HEART is a novel approach in that it uses several current instructional strategies (place-based learning, project-based learning, gamification, and design thinking) to empower students to engage with their community. If students want to implement their resilience projects that arise from the curriculum, mini-grants are available to fund projects. The HEART program is currently in its second year of piloting in rural and urban Colorado schools. We will present preliminary evaluation findings and share curriculum and program design strategies.

Forests are becoming drier due to a warming climate thus increasing the risk of wildfires. In recent years, wildfires have grown larger and more severe. In the U.S., over 80% of wildfires are human-caused and such events can substantially extend the fire season. At the same time, more and more people are living in areas where wildfires can burn. Recent fires have illustrated the devastating consequences of fires in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). In this context, the ability to rapidly assess fuel load is crucial in assessing and managing the risk of wildfires. Current methods for monitoring fuel loads (e.g., FIREMON, Brown’s Transect) are accurate but time- and personnel-intensive. The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Observer Fire Fuel app is being developed using the Photoload Sampling Technique to offer options in rapidly assessing fuel loads by 1) providing citizen scientists with a fast and easy method to monitor WUI fuel loads, enabling them to contribute to the knowledge of fuels in their communities, and empowering them to think more about how fuels might be managed in their area; and 2) offering natural resource managers and fire science researchers a detailed, scientific application that primarily aids experts already studying fuels to better collect the fuels data they need. This poster will provide an overview of the GLOBE Observer Fire Fuel app and the current app development status. We will highlight the value and opportunity the power of smartphones and tablets offer to rapidly assess fuel loads via an app-based method compared to collecting the data on paper. We greatly welcome input from the fire science community at this point of the fire fuel app development.