Jennifer Balch

Jennifer Balch is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder and Director of the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Inclusion Lab (ESIIL) at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). Her research focuses on global fire regimes, climate change impacts, and interactions between human activities and ecosystem dynamics. She actively contributes to environmental data science education through programs like the Earth Data Science Corps.

Research Interests

Dr. Balch investigates:

• Fire's role in the Earth system
• Fire-climate feedback loops
• Invasive grass-fire cycle dynamics
• Anthropogenic fire regime shifts
• Carbon cycle disruptions
• Wildfire risk to human settlements

Recent Publication Trends

Her 2022-2025 publications emphasize:

• Accelerated wildfire growth rates linked to climate change
• Indigenous data governance in environmental science
• Machine learning for fire prediction and vegetation mapping
• Sentinel satellite applications in forest monitoring
• Human-driven fire expansion in wildland-urban interfaces
• Climate-driven fire behavior modeling

Scientific Recognition

• 2022: Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher

Collaborative Efforts

Dr. Balch leads:

• ESIIL - a national environmental data science center
• Earth Lab at CIRES
• Interdisciplinary teams developing fire growth algorithms

She advocates for climate-adapted building codes and has been featured in major media outlets discussing wildfire risk management.