President Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn

Wildfire and smoke maps like this one on the federal government's fire.airnow.gov website were developed in part from research funded by the U.S. Forest Service fire.airnow.gov hide caption

SEATTLE — Few public universities get more federal research funding than the University of Washington.

So as President Trump has already cancelled or suspended about a quarter of all funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, the atmosphere on this leafy Seattle campus is tense.

The anxiety is even trickling down to lower profile places once considered safe from White House politics, like UW's School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Here, newly proposed U.S. Forest Service funding cuts and a larger reorganization of the agency would have immediate consequences as the West looks poised for an epic summer of wildfires and smoke.

"We have a wildfire crisis in the West [and] in the United States," says Ernesto Alvarado, a fire ecologist and associate professor at the school.

Alvarado is looking at a giant map of the U.S. on his computer. It shows where wildfire smoke is, where it's forecast to drift, as well as the harmful particulates in it.  He zooms in on a wildfire burning in New Mexico, where the smoke is dense and might be of concern for any immunocompromised people in the area.

Fire ecologist Ernesto Alvarado in his Seattle office at the University of Washington, which is a top recipient of federal research grants. Kirk Siegler/NPR hide caption

"If someone is living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, they can go and see where the smoke is going to," Alvarado says, moving his mouse from one monitoring station to the next.