Communities across the western United States face an existential crisis. As forests become drier and thicker with vegetation, and development encroaches further into forested areas, wildfires grow larger, more frequent and more damaging. Professors Paige Fischer and Steve Yaffee, along with their colleagues at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability, are working with practitioners across the west to address this growing concern.

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The push for consumers to go electric for their energy needs has significant environmental benefits as the world deals with the disruptive, deadly effects of climate change. Yet the economic burden of a big switch could fall more on lower income, minority communities, according to research co-authored by Catherine Hausman, an associate professor of public policy at U-M.