Mark A. Sofronov, 1930-2010

             

Dr. Mark A. Sofronov, a leading scientific researcher at the Forest Fire Laboratory of the Sukachev Institute of Forest in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, has died. Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1930, Sofronov created a simple empirical fire growth model in 1967. His team developed a variety of inputs for the model in the 1990s, and recent software using the model has shown good results in test areas. He specialized in forest fire ecology, pyrological partitioning, fire danger rating and empirical fire growth modeling. He was an author and co-author of more than 250 publications, including nine monographs and three books. He co-authored "Russian Disarray," which appeared in our July/August 2010 issue.