A headshot of Melanie Wheatley.
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Melanie Wheatley

PhD Candidate

Melanie is a PhD candidate supervised by Dr. Mike Wotton in the Firelab. Melanie’s research focuses on examining forest fire suppression effectiveness, including both ground and aerial suppression, in the Canadian boreal forest. Melanie is specifically using a multi-method approach to explore suppression effectiveness, utilizing a combination of historical fire archive and airtanker mission data from the province of Ontario, paired with field-based experimental burning using remote sensing and infrared imaging technology to examine the effect of the application of water on fire behaviour. Melanie’s research is funded by an NSERC Canada Doctoral Graduate Scholarship. Melanie is passionate about fire management in Canada, having worked eight fire seasons in several different operational and research capacities in Ontario.

Recent Publications

  • Wheatley, M., Wotton, B. M., Woolford, D. G., Martell, D. L., & Johnston, J. M. (2022). Modelling decisions concerning the dispatch of airtankers for initial attack on forest fires in Ontario, Canada. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfr-2022-0225
  • Wheatley, M., Wotton, B. M., Woolford, D. G., Martell, D. L. & Johnston, J. M. (2022). Modelling initial attack success on forest fires suppressed by air attack in the province of Ontario, Canada. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 31(8), 774-785. https://doi.org/10.1071/WF22006
  • Boychuk, D., McFayden, C. B., Woolford, D. G., Wotton, M., Stacey, A., Evens, J., Hanes, C. C. & Wheatley, M. (2021). Considerations for categorizing and visualizing numerical information: a case study of fire occurrence prediction models in the Province of Ontario, Canada. Fire, 4(3), 50. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire4030050
  • Dufour, D., Le Noc, L., Tremblay, B., Tremblay, M. N., Généreux, F., Terroux, M., Vachon C., Wheatley, M.J., Johnston, J.M, Wotton, M. & Topart, P. (2021). A bi-spectral microbolometer sensor for wildfire measurement. Sensors, 21(11), 3690. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21113690

Recent Presentations

  • Airtanker effectiveness: Increasing effort, decreasing success paradox. Presented at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, National Fire Management Conservations webinar series on November 23, 2022. Click to view presentation. 
  • Fighting Fire from the Sky. Presented at the University of Toronto ‘Three Minute Thesis’ finals on April 7, 2022. Click to view presentation.