Spatiotemporal patterns of historical fire and stand development -- the Tree Ring Lab

This work in the domain of dendroecology recognizes and respects the importance of Indigenous Knowledges, Practices, and Belief Systems related to cultural burning that contribute to fire histories and the importance of cultural burning to our current and future landscapes. We strive to braid western science and Indigenous science into our understanding of fire ecology and fire histories as a socio-ecological system. Our work looks at spatial and temporal patterns of fire and stand conditions using a tree ring science approach, asking questions about distribution and frequency of historical landscape fire, how fire edits and affects forest stand development, with a particular focus on old forests and how they came to be. Our tree ring science has implications for landscape restoration, forest biodiversity conservation, links to climate change adaptation.

Our College of Forestry Tree Ring Lab website is a work in progress, but shares a lot of details about who we are and what we do. Stay tuned for more! 

Ongoing investigations include:

Disturbance ecology of Marbled Murrelet forest habitat in the Coast Range of Oregon (Jenn Bailey-Guerrero, PhD candidate)

Fire in the Valley -- fire history and stand reconstructions of old forest reserves in the McDonald-Dunn Research Forest (Charles Drake, MS student)

Fire history and stand reconstructions of a conifer-hardwood forest ecosystems in SW Oregon (Sven Rodne, MS student)

• Fire history and stand reconstructions of the Fremont-Winema and Umpqua National Forests of Oregon: drivers of variability in historical fire across contrasting landscapes (Andrew Merschel, PhD work)
• Disjunct and decoupled? The persistence of a fire-sensitive conifer species in a historically frequent-fire landscape (Will Downing and collaborators)