Dr. Paul Hessburg is a Research Landscape Ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station (PNWRS). There, he leads a research team that studies management influences on forest landscapes and their disturbance regimes. Paul has worked in R&D for 42 years, researching the landscape and disturbance ecology of western US and North American forests. His team explores climate change effects on forest and nonforest patterns, wildfire resilience mechanisms and their persistence under climate change, forest fuel succession and pattern influences on wildfire behavior, and decision support tool development for landscape evaluation.

Paul holds a PhD in Botany and Plant Pathology from Oregon State University (1984), and a BS in Forestry from the University of Minnesota (1978). He has authored more than 200 refereed articles, books, and book chapters. In 2017, he received the PNWRS and USDA-FS Chief’s Distinguished Scientist awards. Paul resides in Wenatchee, WA, is married with grown kids, and he and his wife Mary have six nearly perfect grandchildren.