A Sonoma State University professor is getting grant money related to fire research. Dr. Lisa Patrick Bentley, associate professor in the Biology Department, has been awarded $1.1 million from the National Science Foundation to research fire and ecosystem ecology in California and develop educational outreach activities. The funding will enable Sonoma State biology students to employ state-of-the-art remote sensing equipment to collect biological data essential to furthering our understanding of forest structure, from determining its impact on past wildfire intensity and predicting how it affects future wildfire risk. As part of the grant, Dr. Bentley and her graduate students will mentor first-year underrepresented biology students to create a virtual “field trip” using their research findings on wildfire and forest structure.