Rate My Professor Kate Wilkin

Her research interests center on prescribed fire, fire adaptations of plants and plant communities, and wildfire recovery across fire-prone California ecosystems from wilderness to wildland-urban interface, including chaparral and mixed-conifer forests. Key publications encompass "Pyrodiversity begets plant–pollinator community diversity" (Global Change Biology, 2016), "Vegetation change during 40 years of repeated managed wildfires in the Sierra Nevada, California" (Forest Ecology and Management, 2017), "A roadmap for pyrodiversity science" (Journal of Biogeography, 2024), "Drivers of understory plant communities in Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forests with pyrodiversity" (Fire Ecology, 2021), and "Long-term influence of prescribed burning on subsequent wildfire in an old-growth coast redwood forest" (Fire Ecology, 2025). Dr. Wilkin has received grants including a $100,000 EPA Environmental Education grant (PI, 2019) and awards such as the Berkeley College of Natural Resources Graduate Student in Extension Fellowship ($40,000, 2015) and National Park Service George Melendez Wright Climate Change Fellowship ($20,000, 2012). She led adaptation of the USFS FireWorks curriculum for California fire literacy, co-hosted workshops on prescribed fire and recovery, addressed over 60 public meetings, and appeared in Science Magazine, NPR’s Science Friday, Outside Magazine, and Sunset Magazine.