David Schmidt

Dave Schmidt is a fire ecologist specializing in modeling fire behavior, fuels, and smoke emissions. He earned a BS in computer engineering from Iowa State University and an MS in geography (minor in plant ecology) from The Pennsylvania State University. Before joining SIG, Dave was a fire ecologist with The Nature Conservancy based at the University of California Davis. While in that position, he worked closely with US Forest Service ecologists on GIS analysis as well as vegetation and fire modeling projects across the state, but primarily in the Sierra Nevada. While with TNC he also spent extensive time in the field collecting data in burned and unburned landscapes. Dave spent four summers working on wildfire crews including one summer with the Chena Hotshots. He currently lives in western Iowa where he and his wife manage a farm business.