The scientific committee brings together internationally recognised experts in wildfire science, ecology, remote sensing, climate impacts, and forest management. Their combined expertise ensures scientific rigour and credibility across the full spectrum of fire research, from fundamental processes to risk assessment, ecosystem impacts, and applied decision support.
Dr. Martin Adámek
Martin is a researcher at the Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe research network). His work focuses on fire ecology, long-term fire regimes, and the role of fire in shaping temperate forest ecosystems in Central Europe. His research combines paleoecological, historical, and spatial data to reconstruct Holocene and millennial-scale fire dynamics, including analyses of charcoal records, vegetation change, and landscape development. He is co-author of studies on forest fire occurrence in Central European sandstone landscapes, including research demonstrating that fire has been a recurring ecological driver in temperate forest systems over long time scales. His work also addresses drivers of wildfire occurrence in cultural landscapes, linking fire activity to environmental conditions and human land-use patterns. His research contributes to improved understanding of the long-term role of fire in Central European forest ecosystems, including implications for contemporary forest management and fire risk interpretation.
Dr. Alicja Bonk
Alicja is an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Change Reconstruction Laboratory at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. She is an oceanographer and palaeoenvironmental researcher specialising in annually laminated lake sediments as high-resolution archives of environmental change. Her research focuses on reconstructing past fire regimes and examining the long-term interactions between climate, vegetation, human activity, and fire over timescales ranging from centuries to more than 13,000 years. Her work has advanced the interpretation of charcoal records by distinguishing fire intensity, fuel characteristics, and the spatial scale of past fires, providing valuable insights into the role of fire in ecosystem dynamics and improving our understanding of long-term wildfire regimes and human–environment interactions in Central and Northern Europe.
Prof. Elisabeth Dietze
Elisabeth is Professor of Landscape Geoscience at the University of Göttingen. Her research focuses on landscape change, fire regimes, vegetation dynamics, hydrology, and geomorphological processes, with particular emphasis on long-term environmental change reconstructed from sediment archives. She has conducted research on wildfire history and fire–climate–vegetation interactions across Central Europe and Siberia, including post-fire dynamics in the Harz region. She is involved in research projects addressing fire regimes, ecosystem change, and environmental variability across different temporal and spatial scales.
Prof. Stefan Doerr
Stefan is Professor of Wildland Fire Science at Swansea University and Director of the Centre for Wildfire Research. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Wildland Fire and a contributor to major European research initiatives including the FirEUrisk project. His expertise includes wildfire science, soil physical and chemical characteristics, hydrology, water contamination, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry. His research focuses on fundamental and applied questions relating to fire effects on landscape carbon dynamics, soils and water quality, ecosystem services, as well as global fire patterns, trends, risk, and social perceptions of wildfire.
Prof. Matthias Forkel
Matthias is Professor for Environmental Remote Sensing at TU Dresden. His research focuses on the development and application of satellite-based optical and microwave Earth observation data and models to analyse changes in terrestrial ecosystems, vegetation, and the carbon and water cycles. He works on disturbance regimes, including vegetation fires, and their role in ecosystem dynamics, carbon cycling, and emissions. His research includes the use of satellite observations and model–data integration approaches to quantify fuel conditions, fire behaviour, fire severity, and fire emissions. He is the project leader of the ESA Sense4Fire project, which develops Sentinel-based products to observe and quantify fire dynamics and wildfire emissions.
Dr. Lucie Kudláčková
Lucie is a researcher at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe) in Brno. Her research focuses on wildfire risk assessment, fire weather indices, and fire behaviour modelling using simulation tools such as FlamMap and FARSITE. She works extensively with GIS and geospatial datasets to analyse the spatial variability of fire risk and to develop methods for wildfire prediction and assessment. Her scientific work includes the application and evaluation of fire danger indices, modelling of wildfire occurrence and behaviour, and integration of empirical and model-based approaches for crisis management and environmental applications. She has contributed to peer-reviewed publications on fire danger forecasting, wildfire behaviour modelling, and fire weather thresholds, including studies on the Canadian Fire Weather Index and fire behaviour simulation in Central European landscapes. She is involved in applied research activities supporting wildfire risk assessment and operational fire management, including collaboration with the Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic and other national institutions.
Prof. Francesco Pirotti
Francesco is a Professor at the University of Padua (TESAF – Department of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry). His research focuses on geospatial analysis, GIS, and remote sensing applications for forestry and environmental monitoring. His work includes the development of fuel mapping systems, canopy fuel datasets, and spatial data infrastructures for wildfire risk and fire behaviour modelling. He is responsible for scientific coordination activities within the EU Interreg Central Europe Wildfire CE project, where he leads Work Package 1, focused on fuel data collection, mapping, and fire modelling inputs. His research also contributes to European wildfire-related initiatives, including FIRE-RES, with a focus on operational fire risk data systems and geospatial modelling approaches.
Dr. Jaša Saražin
Jaša is a researcher at the Slovenian Forestry Institute (Gozdarski inštitut Slovenije), Department for Forest Technique and Economics. His work focuses on forest infrastructure, forest engineering, and wildfire prevention, with particular emphasis on the role of forest roads, access systems, and spatial planning in supporting effective fire management and suppression. His research addresses wildfire mitigation through improvements in forest accessibility, fire road networks, and operational logistics for firefighting. He has contributed to applied studies on wildfire behaviour in relation to terrain accessibility and the efficiency of suppression operations in forested landscapes.
Dr. Alena Sucháčková
Alena is a researcher at the Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on biogeography, molecular ecology, and conservation biology, with emphasis on butterfly population dynamics and species responses to environmental change. Her work includes studies of biodiversity and genetic structure in temperate ecosystems, including research in fire-affected and post-disturbance forest landscapes in Central Europe. She has contributed to studies on ecological recovery processes following large forest fire events, including work in Bohemian Switzerland National Park.
Prof. Kirsten Thonicke
Kirsten is Deputy Head of the Earth System Analysis Research Department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Working Group Leader of the Ecosystems in Transition group. Her research focuses on how climate and land-use change affect ecosystems, biodiversity, and fire regimes. Her areas of expertise include wildfire, soil physical and chemical characteristics, hydrology, water contamination, geomorphology, and biogeochemistry. She was involved in the FirEUrisk project, contributing to research on wildfire risk under climate and socio-economic change. She has also provided expert commentary on wildfire and climate change in major German-language media.
Prof. Miroslav Trnka
Miroslav is a senior researcher at the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CzechGlobe) and Mendel University in Brno. His research focuses on climate change impacts, drought, and extreme weather events, and their effects on agriculture, forestry, and ecosystems in Central Europe. His work includes the analysis and modelling of climate extremes, drought conditions, and fire-weather related indicators, with emphasis on long-term trends and variability in environmental stress factors. He has contributed to the development and application of agro-climatic indices and monitoring systems used to assess climate-related risks to land systems. He is a co-author of numerous peer-reviewed studies on climate variability and extreme events, including research on fire-conducive weather conditions and increasing wildfire risk under changing climate conditions in Central Europe. His work supports applied climate services and tools used in adaptation planning for agriculture and forestry.
Prof. Harald Vacik
Harald is a Professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, and a leading expert in forest fire risk assessment and decision support for sustainable forest management. His research includes the development of the Austrian Forest Fire Database and key contributions to major European wildfire projects such as ALP FFIRS and FIRIA, with a strong focus on fire risk in Alpine and mountain regions. He combines expertise in silvicultural planning, decision support systems, and ICT-based tools to support evidence-based forestry and wildfire management.