Craig D Allen, Ph.D. (Former Employee)

ContextMontane grasslands and forest-grassland ecotones are unique and dynamic components of many landscapes, but the processes that regulate their dynamics are difficult to observe over ecologically relevant time spans.ObjectivesWe aimed to demonstrate the efficacy of using grassland-forest ecotone trees to reconstruct spatial and temporal...

Drought and warming increasingly are causing widespread tree die-offs and extreme wildfires. Forest managers are struggling to improve anticipatory forest management practices given more frequent, extensive, and severe wildfire and tree die-off events triggered by “hotter drought”—drought under warmer than historical conditions. Of even greater...

Fire exclusion in historically frequent-fire forests of the southwestern United States has altered forest structure and increased the probability of high-severity fire. Warmer and drier conditions, coupled with dispersal distance limitations, are impeding tree seedling establishment and survival following high-severity fire. High-severity patches...

Unraveling the effects of climate and land-use on historical fire regimes provides important insights into broader human-fire-climate dynamics, which are necessary for ecologically-based forest management. We developed a spatial human land-use model for Navajo Nation forests across which we sampled a network of tree-ring fire history sites to...

Biodiversity contributes to and depends on ecosystem structure and associated function. Ecosystem structure, such as the amount and type of tree cover, influences fundamental abiotic variables such as near-ground incoming solar radiation (e.g., Royer et al. 2011), which in turn affects species and associated biodiversity (e.g., Trotter et al. 2008...