FHiRE: Fire & Humans in Resilient Ecosystems

This project was funded from 2011 to 2014 by the National Science Foundation, Dynamics of Coupled Human-Natural Systems

In the past half-century many thousands of homes have been built within North American forests dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) trees.  These forests and communities are now extremely vulnerable to large, severe fires during droughts as a consequence of fire exclusion and other land use practices.  Through a historical case study, this project tested alternative hypotheses of how human activities at the Wildland Urban Interface affected the response of fire-adapted pine forests to climate change and conversely, how humans responded to these changes over multiple centuries.  The study area is an ancient Wildland Urban Interface in northern New Mexico where large communities of Native American farmers lived within ponderosa pine forests through varying climate episodes over the last 1,000 years.  Archaeology and paleoecology were combined to build multi-century fire and forest histories across gradients of human population sizes, ranging from large towns to relatively unoccupied areas.  Dynamic computer models were developed, and used paleoclimatic data as input to simulate fire and forest histories across the landscape and through time.  Tested against the local fire histories, these simulations were varied in the magnitude and location of human impacts to identify tipping points in the sustainability of these forests and human communities.  

Fire & Climate History in Siberia

This was a collaborative project funded by NASA, 2010-2014  (and sub-contracts through US Forest Service)

We used both modern and paleo-fire reconstructions to evaluate relationships with changing climate patterns, variations in vegetation and fire weather patterns to estimate historic fire emissions and impacts of fire on carbon cycle at landscape to regional scales in Siberia.

Our part of this project was aimed at developing a network of fire-scar chronologies from several sub-regions in Siberia, and using these chronologies to extend our understanding of fire, climate and carbon variations over the past several centuries.  

Collaborators:  Tom Swetnam (UA co-PI), Gallina Ivanova (Sukachev Instit., RAS, co-PI), Sue Conard, overall PI of the project), Amber Soja, Brian Stocks, Anatoly Sukhinin, Brian Stocks, Don Cahoon, Bill DeGroot, Chris Baisan, Erica Bigio and others​

Fire & Climate Synthesis, North America

WIth support form the USDI/USDA Joint Fire Science Program and the US Forest Service, we assembled a state-of-knowledge of fire climatology in the western United States. This work encompassed several sub-projects, including a study of modern and paleofire and climate data to identify recent patterns, associations, trends, etc., both temporally and spatially. Other major components include translational products for managers and decision makers, and a study of policy responses to past major fire events and seasons.

Collaborators:  Tom Swetnam (PI), Don Falk, ELaine Sutherland, Peter Brown, Tim Brown, Emily Heyerdahl, Thomas Kitzberger, Tony Westerling, Mike Crimmins, Gregg Garfin

Tree-Ring Dating of Puebloan and Historic Buildings in New Mexico

Since 2015 I have been tree-ring dating ancient timbers from Jemez Mountains fieldhouse and pueblo ruins, in consultation with Jemez Pueblo cultural resource managers and permit from the US Forest Service.

I have also collaborated with SW archaeologist Tom Windes on sampling and tree-ring dating of roof and lintel timbers from more that two dozen historic era haciendas, churches and other structures from northern New Mexico.