Educational Background

Research Interests

My research is focused on reconstructing the fire history of both the kipuka and the surrounding contiguous forest of the Lava Cast Forest. Fire has been and will be a crucial factor in the structure, composition, and succession of ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine forests, and as the kipuka in the study area have not been logged, they provide an ideal opportunity to locate trees old enough to hold information on fire activity long before the arrival of Europeans. Thus far we have reconstructed a fire history that extends back to AD 1150, currently the longest fire history created for ponderosa pine forests anywhere.

My thesis examined the fire history for changes in fire frequency that occurred with the onset of European settlement of the area in the 1900s. A significant shift toward less frequent fires was found, as well as a significant decrease in fire frequency in the 1800s. Age-cohort data were combined with large fire events to map possible stand replacing fires. Kelly Pohl used this fire history in her M.S. on the correlation between landscape scale climatic variations and fire occurrence. Additional samples will be taken to increase the depth and length of the fire history to analyze spatial and temporal relations between fire activity, climate, and the effects of isolation on the successional pathways of the stands found in the Lava Cast Forest.