Congrats to Jannike Allen who defended her undergraduate Honor’s thesis today. She spent the last 9 months learning R and analyzing a large forest inventory dataset. Great work Jannike!
New lab member
We recently added a new member to our lab. Meet Rue, Pandemic Puppy. She’s a sweet 4th month old hound mix from a shelter in Portland. She likes cuddling and snacks but hates the rain.
Seminar at WSU Vancouver
Melissa gave a seminar about ReburnsAK at Washington State University Vancouver campus on 2.24.2020..
Seminar at UO
Melissa gave the Tea Talk seminar in the Geography Department at the University of Oregon on 2.20.2020. What a great department!
Shelby was selected as a NEON Early Career Scholar!
Shelby Weiss was selected as a NEON Early Career Scholar for ESA 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Look for her at ESA!
Our new paper featured in Science X Daily
New lab publication about wildfire in the west
Here we show that, while there is a strong negative feedback for very short reburning intervals throughout wildland forests of the Western US, that feedback weakens after 10-20 years. Also, the relationship between reburning intervals and drought diverges depending on location, with coastal systems reburning quicker (e.g., shorter interval between fires) in wetter conditions and interior forests in drier. This supports the idea that vegetation productivity – primarily fine fuels that accumulate rapidly (<10 years) – is of primary importance in determining reburn intervals.
Buma B, SA Weiss, K Hayes and MS Lucash. 2020. Wildland fire reburning trends across the US West suggest only short-term negative feedback and differing climatic effects.
Accepted to Environmental Research Letters doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6c70
Finishing up your PhD or Postdoc this winter or spring? Join our lab!
Want details about the postdoc opening on our Siberia project? Click here. We start reviewing applications on 1/6/20.
Shelby, Jannike, and Melissa are headed to AGU!
We are presenting posters at #AGU2019 about our work in Alaska.
Details about all the talks and posters associated with the ReburnsAK project can be found here: https://www.reburnsak.com/blog
AFE talks in Tucson
Melissa and Shelby co-authored several talks at the AFE (American Fire Ecology) conference in Tucson, Arizona from Nov 18-22, 2019:
Negative feedbacks among multiple disturbances in north-central Minnesota (Lucash, Scheller, Gustafson, and Sturtevant
Continued repeat burning in the boreal causes continued ecosystem transformation (Hayes, Buma, Lucash, Weiss)
Rates of short-interval fires increasing across the U.S. West (Buma, Hayes, Weiss and Lucash)
AFE venue in Tucson, AZ. It was gorgeous!