Interaction of Fire, Climate, and Forest Structure in Northern Mexico

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Forest fires are powerful agents of ecological change, linked to the amounts and types of fuels as well as to climate patterns such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal and Atlantic Oscillations. This project is an international collaboration with Mexican scientists Jose Villanueva-Diaz and Eladio Cornejo-Oviedo. A new network of long-term fire and climate chronologies will be developed together with analyses of fuel dynamics in northern Mexico. Unique relict sites that are among the least perturbed by modern human impacts, will be a key part of the chrono-sequences to be established. The study will reconstruct fire regimes for the past about 300 years using fire-scarred trees. Climate variables will be determined through tree-ring analysis and from data collected by field instruments, and forest structure will be directly measured. The research will benefit both Mexico and the United States. Funding will support graduate and undergraduate students from both countries. In addition to scientific publications, the results will be interpreted and transferred to decision makers, including landowners, managers, and conservation organizations. The findings will increase understanding of the fuel and climate factors that regulate fire regimes and of how fire patterns might change in the future. They will have immediate relevance for conservation strategies in the biologically diverse forests of northern Mexico and the southwestern U.S.