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Research Interests: Fire Ecology, Land Cover Change, Land Cover and Land Use Interactions, Dynamic Systems
Fuel Treatment Effectiveness in the United States
Biodiversity implications of forest disturbance
Selected Publications
Graduate Students
Dr. Mark Cochrane of SDSU conducts interdisciplinary work that combines remote sensing, ecology and other fields of study to provide a landscape perspective of the dynamic processes involved in land-cover change. He is an expert on wildfire in tropical ecosystems, documenting the characteristics, behavior and severe effects of fire in tropical forests that are inherent to current systems of human land-use. His research focuses on understanding spatial patterns, interactions and synergisms between the multiple physical and biological factors that affect ecosystems. Recently published work emphasizes the human dimensions of land-cover change and the potential for sustainable development, and has been instrumental in the Brazilian government's recent program to expand its national forest system in the Amazon to 50 million hectares. In his ongoing research program, Dr. Cochrane continues to investigate the drivers and effects of disturbance regime changes resulting from various forms of forest degradation, including fire, fragmentaion and logging. He currently has funded projects in Brazil through NASA and USAID, the United States (Joint Fire Sciences) and in China (NASA). He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University and a S.B. in Environmental Engineering from the Massachusetts Institue of Technology. | 
Map of forests in the Brazilian Amazon which could be... more
Spatial distribution of fire regimes. Black areas are previously deforested... more
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