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Best known for her work involving the Earth Lab Project at University of Colorado Boulder, ecologist Jennifer Balch primarily researches the relationship between fire and the Amazon. She specializes in research involving temperate and tropical ecosystems.

Early life and Education
Before her groundbreaking work, Dr. Balch discovered her love for ecology and fire science during her undergrad, where she graduated from Princeton with her B.A. in 1999. She then began her graduate work at Yale, where she graduated in 2004 and 2008 with her M.S. and Ph.D. respectively.

Career
Dr. Balch is a (recently) tenured associate professor of geography, associate professor of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and faculty director and associate professor of the geography department at the University of Colorado Boulder. She was previously an associate professor at the Pennsylvania State University from 2012-2014, also teaching geography. While at Boulder, however, she has come up with and brought to fruition (as an assistant professor) the Earth Lab Project at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dr. Balch is currently the director and Project Fire Principal Investigator of the Earth Lab. The Earth Lab Project is a place where extensive amounts of data are compiled and interpreted in reference to ecosystems where fire seems immanent.

Achievements and Honors
Dr. Jennifer Balch was named an Ecological Study of America (ESA) Early Career Fellow (2016-2020) for her research involving “fire risk, proliferation and consequences” in various different ecosystems and climates. Dr. Balch also published a groundbreaking study in 2017 which found that humans are the cause of 84% of wildfires a year. These wildfires were found to not only effect ecosystems but also our own economy as well. Fire management and performance-based prevention is expensive, which could potentially cause a shift in resource allocation within Brazil.

Selected publications

 * Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across the United States, Balch et. al 2017, PNAS
 * Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes, Schoennagel et. al 2017, PNAS
 * Pattern and process: Fire-initiated grass invasion at Amazon transitional forest edges, Balch, Nepstad, & Curran 2009
 * Recognizing Women Leaders in Fire Science, Smith et. al 2018
 * The Susceptibility of Southeastern Amazon Forests to Fire: Insights from a Large-Scale Burn Experiment, Balch et. al 2015