Guiterman, C.H., Margolis, E.Q., Swetnam, T.W. 2015. Dendroecological methods for reconstructing high severity fire in pine-oak forests. Tree-Ring Research 71(2):67-77. http://doi.org/10.3959/1536-1098-71.2.67
Ellis Q Margolis, Ph.D.
Ellis Margolis is an ecologist with the Fort Collins Science Center, stationed at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station. His research focuses on land use and climatic effects on fire regimes and forests in the southwestern U.S.
Biography
Ellis Margolis is a research ecologist at the New Mexico Landscapes Field Station, a Fort Collins Science Center facility in New Mexico. Ellis received a Ph.D. in Watershed Management from the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, Arizona. Since joining the USGS in 2015, he has continued his research on the interactions between fire, forests, and climate and specializes in dendrochronology (the study of tree ring dating). Presently, his research focuses on land use and climatic effects on fire regimes and forests in the southwestern U.S. to guide fire regime and forest restoration for watershed management.
Education
- Ph.D. Watershed Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona - 2007
- M.S. Watershed Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona - 2003
- B.S. Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona - 1995
Professional Experience
- 2015 - present, Research Ecologist, USGS New Mexico Landscapes Field Station, Fort Collins Science Center, Santa Fe, NM
- 2009 - 2015, Research Associate, University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Tucson, AZ
- 1999 - 2008, Graduate Teaching and Research Assistant, University of Arizona, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Tucson, AZ
- 1998 - 1999, Fire Technician, The Nature Conservancy National Fire Management and Research Program, Tall Timbers, FL
- 1997 - 1998, Biologist, The Nature Conservancy Albany Pine Bush Preserve and Eastern NY Chapter, Albany, NY
In the News & Media
- The history of fire and changing forests in the Santa Fe Fireshed (2020)
- Prescribed Protection (2019)
- Where there's smoke (2018)
- Lecture illuminates 400 years of fire (2018)
- Tree rings reveal increased fire risk for southwestern US (2018)
- Challenge brewing to forest thinning plan (2018)
- Prepping for the big one: Armed with data, fire watchers gear up for the seasons ahead (2018)
- To Understand the Growing Wildfire Threat, Look to the Tree Rings (2018)
- It’s so dry, forests across the Southwest are closing (2018)
- Firing up science (2017)
- The Heart of Darkness: A walk through the scorched landscapes where our forest used to be and a glimpse of our future fires (2017)
- Changing Fire Regimes (2017)
- Taos tree ring fire history included in a story map - Resilient Taos County: Living with Wildfire (2017)
- Lack of tree regeneration after fires (2016)
- Tree Rings Tell Stories (2016)
- Burned in wood: study uses tree rings to trace Taos-area fire history (2016)
Science and Products
Date published: April 15, 2019
Status: Active Effects of disturbance and drought on the forests and hydrology of the Southern Rocky Mountains
Climate-related forest disturbances, particularly drought-induced tree mortality and large, high-severity fires from increasingly warm and dry conditions, are altering forest ecosystems and the ecosystem services society depends on (e.g., water supplies). Our research combines long-term place-based ecological data, diverse methods (e.g., paleo, remote-sensing), and networking approaches to...
Attribution: Ecosystems, Climate Research and Development Program
Date published: September 23, 2016
Status: Active The New Mexico Landscapes Field Station
The New Mexico Landscapes Field Station is a place-based, globally-connected, ecological research group that studies and interprets ecosystem and wildlife dynamics, working with land managers and community leaders to deliver solutions that foster the linked health of human and natural systems.
Our partnerships, and co-location, with land management agencies provide us with opportunities...
Contacts: Craig D Allen, Ph.D., Ernie Valdez, Ph.D., Ellis Q Margolis, Ph.D., Jens T Stevens, Ph.D., Kay Beeley
Date published: September 22, 2016
Status: Active The Western Mountain Initiative (WMI)
Western Mountain Initiative (WMI) is a long-term collaboration between FORT, WERC, NOROCK, USFS, NPS, LANL, and universities worldwide to address changes in montane forests and watersheds due to climate change. Current emphases include altered forest disturbance regimes (fire, die-off, insect outbreaks) and hydrology; interactions between plants, water, snow, nutrient cycles, and climate; and...
Attribution: Fort Collins Science Center
Date published: August 30, 2016
New Mexico Dendroecology Lab
Using tree ring analysis as a primary research tool, we conduct landscape-scale ecological research that focuses on the effects of climate variability on forest ecology, fire ecology, and ecohydrology.
We are the only tree-ring lab in New Mexico, working in close collaboration with Bandelier National Monument and Emeritus Regents’ Professor Dr. Thomas Swetnam. However, we were not the...
Year Published: 2021
Native American fire management at an ancient wildland–urban interface in the Southwest United States
The intersection of expanding human development and wildland landscapes—the “wildland–urban interface” or WUI—is one of the most vexing contexts for fire management because it involves complex interacting systems of people and nature. Here, we document the dynamism and stability of an ancient WUI that was apparently sustainable for more than 500 y...
Roos, Christopher; Swetnam, Thomas W.; Ferguson, T. J.; Liebmann, Matthew J.; Loehman, Rachel A.; Welch, John; Margolis, Ellis; Guiterman, Christopher H.; Hockaday, William; Aiuvalasit, Michael; Battillo, Jenna; Farella, Joshua; Kiahtipes, ChristopherAttribution: Alaska Science Center, Region 11: Alaska
Year Published: 2021
Valleys of fire: Historical fire regimes of forest-grassland ecotones across the montane landscape of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, New Mexico, USA
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...
Dewar, J. J.; Falk, Donald A.; Swetnam, T. W.; Baisan, C. H.; Allen, Craig D.; Parmenter, R. R.; Margolis, EllisAttribution: Fort Collins Science Center, Ecosystems
Year Published: 2020
Dendrochronology of a rare long-lived mediterranean shrub
Ceanothus verrucosus (CEVE) is a globally rare, long-lived, chaparral shrub endemic to coastal southern California (CA) and northern Mexico. There is concern for CEVE persistence because of habitat loss, fire, and climate change, yet little is known about basic features of the plant, including whether it contains annual rings, plant age, and...
Margolis, Ellis; Lombardo, Keith; Smith, Andrew E.
Year Published: 2020
Wildfire-driven forest conversion in western North American landscapes
Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest...
Coop, Jonathan D.; Parks, Sean A.; Stevens-Rumann, Camile S; Crausbay, Shelley D.; Higuera, Philip E.; Hurteau, Matthew D; Tepley, Alan J.; Whitman, Ellen; Assal, Timothy J; Collins, Brandon M.; Davis, Kimberley T; Dobrowski, Solomon; Falk, Donald A.; Fornwalt, Paula J.; Fulé, Peter Z; Harvey, Brian J.; Kane, Van R.; Littlefield, Caitlin E; Margolis, Ellis; North, Malcolm; Parisien, Marc-André; Prichard, Susan; Rodman, Kyle C
Year Published: 2020
Climate relationships with increasing wildfire in the southwestern US from 1984 to 2015
Over the last several decades in forest and woodland ecosystems of the southwestern United States, wildfire size and severity have increased, thereby increasing the vulnerability of these systems to type conversions, invasive species, and other disturbances. A combination of land use history and climate change is widely thought to be contributing...
Mueller, Stephanie; Thode, Andrea E.; Margolis, Ellis; Yocom, Larissa; Young, Jesse M.; Iniguez, Jose M.
Year Published: 2019
Spatio-temporal variability of human-fire interactions on the Navajo Nation
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...
Guiterman, Christopher H.; Margolis, Ellis; Baisan, Christopher H.; Falk, Donald A.; Allen, Craig D.; Swetnam, Thomas W.
Year Published: 2019
Surface fire to Crown Fire: Fire history in the Taos Valley watersheds, New Mexico, USA
Tree-ring fire scars, tree ages, historical photographs, and historical surveys indicate that, for centuries, fire played different ecological roles across gradients of elevation, forest, and fire regimes in the Taos Valley Watersheds. Historical fire regimes collapsed across the three watersheds by 1899, leaving all sites without fire for at...
Johnson, Lane B; Margolis, Ellis
Year Published: 2018
Limits to ponderosa pine regeneration following large high-severity forest fires in the United States Southwest
High-severity fires in dry conifer forests of the United States Southwest have created large (>1000 ha) treeless areas that are unprecedented in the regional historical record. These fires have reset extensive portions of Southwestern ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Lawson & C. Lawson var. scopulorum Engelm.) forest landscapes. At least two...
Haffey, Collin; Sisk, Thomas D.; Allen, Craig D.; Thode, Andrea E.; Margolis, Ellis
Year Published: 2018
burnr: Fire history analysis and graphics in R
We developed a new software package, burnr, for fire history analysis and plotting in the Rstatistical programming environment. It was developed for tree-ring fire-scar analysis, but is broadly applicable to other event analyses (e.g., avalanches, frost rings, or culturally modified trees). Our new package can read,...
Malevich, Steven B.; Guiterman, Christopher H.; Margolis, EllisAttribution: Fort Collins Science Center, Ecosystems, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program
View Citation
S.B. Malevich.S.B., C.H. Guiterman, and E.Q. Margolis. 2018. burnr: Fire history analysis and graphics in R. Dendrochronologia 49:9-15.
Year Published: 2018
Advancing dendrochronological studies of fire in the United States
Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010, Amoroso et al., 2017). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and...
Harley, Grant L.; Baisan, Christopher H.; Brown, Peter M.; Falk, Donald A.; Flatley, William T.; Grissino-Mayer, Henri D.; Hessl, Amy; Heyerdahl, Emily K.; Kaye, Margot W.; Lafon, Charles W.; Margolis, Ellis; Maxwell, R. Stockton; Naito, Adam T.; Platt, William J.; Rother, Monica T.; Saladyga, Thomas; Sherriff, Rosemary L.; Stachowiak, Lauren A.; Stambaugh, Michael C.; Sutherland, Elaine Kennedy; Taylor, Alan H.Attribution: Fort Collins Science Center, Ecosystems, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program
View Citation
G.L. Harley, C.H. Baisan, P.M. Brown, D.A. Falk, W.T. Flatley, H.D. Grissino-Mayer, A. Hessl, E.K. Heyerdahl, M.W. Kaye, C.W. Lafon, E.Q. Margolis, R.S. Maxwell, A.T. Naito, W.J. Platt, M.T. Rother, T. Saladyga, R.L. Sherriff, L.A. Stachowiak, M.C. Stambaugh, E.K. Sutherland, and A.H. Taylor. 2018. Advancing Dendrochronological Studies of Fire in the United States. Fire 1(1):1-6.
Year Published: 2018
Long-term persistence and fire resilience of oak shrubfields in dry conifer forests of northern New Mexico
Extensive high-severity fires are creating large shrubfields in many dry conifer forests of the interior western USA, raising concerns about forest-to-shrub conversion. This study evaluates the role of disturbance in shrubfield formation, maintenance and succession in the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. We compared the environmental conditions of...
Guiterman, Christopher H.; Margolis, Ellis; Allen, Craig D.; Falk, Donald A.; Swetnam, Thomas W.Attribution: Fort Collins Science Center, Ecosystems, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program
View Citation
Guiterman, C.H., Margolis, E.Q., Allen, C.D., Falk, D.A., and T.W. Swetnam. Ecosystems (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-017-0192-2
Year Published: 2017
Drought, multi-seasonal climate, and wildfire in northern New Mexico
Wildfire is increasingly a concern in the USA, where 10 million acres burned in 2015. Climate is a primary driver of wildfire, and understanding fire-climate relationships is crucial for informing fire management and modeling the effects of climate change on fire. In the southwestern USA, fire-climate relationships have been informed by tree-ring...
Margolis, Ellis; Woodhouse, Connie A.; Swetnam, Thomas W.Attribution: Fort Collins Science Center, Ecosystems, Climate Research and Development Program, Land Change Science Program
View Citation
Margolis, E.Q., Woodhouse, C.A. and Swetnam, T.W. 2017. Drought, multi-seasonal climate, and wildfire in northern New Mexico. Climatic Change. doi:10.1007/s10584-017-1958-4
Pre-USGS Publications
Margolis, E.Q. and Farris, C.A. 2014. Post-fire quaking aspen regeneration in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, USA. Fire Ecology 10(3):14-26. http://doi.org/10.4996/fireecology.0703088
Margolis, E.Q. 2014. Fire exclusion linked to increased forest density in a piñon-juniper savanna landscape. International Journal of Wildland Fire 23:234-245. http://doi.org/10.1071/WF13053
Fule, P.Z., Swetnam, T.W., Brown, P.M., Falk, D.A., Peterson, D.L., Allen, C.D., Aplet, G.H., Battaglia, M.A., Binkley, D., Farris, C., Keane, R.E., Margolis, E.Q., Grissino-Mayer, H., Miller, C., Sieg, C.H., Skinner, C., Stephens, S.L., and Taylor, A. 2013. Unsupported inferences of high severity fire in historical western United States dry forests: Response to Williams and Baker. Global Ecology and Biogeography. http://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12136.
Margolis, E.Q. and Swetnam, T.W. 2013. Historical fire-climate relationships of upper elevation (>2700m) fire regimes in the southwestern United States. International Journal of Wildland Fire 22:588-598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF12064
Margolis, E.Q., Huffman, D.W., and Iñiguez, J.M. 2013. Southwestern mixed-conifer forests: evaluating reference conditions to guide ecological restoration treatments. Ecological Restoration Institute Working Paper No. 28. Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. http://library.eri.nau.edu/gsdl/collect/erilibra/index/assoc/D2013020.dir/doc.pdf
Margolis, E.Q., Swetnam, T.W., and Allen, C.D. 2011. Historical stand-replacing fire in upper montane forests of the Madrean Sky Islands and Mogollon Plateau, southwestern USA. Fire Ecology 7(3):88-107. http://doi.org/10.4996/fireecology.0703088
Margolis, E.Q., Meko, D.M., and Touchan, R. 2011. A tree-ring reconstruction of streamflow in the Santa Fe River, New Mexico. Journal of Hydrology 397:118-127. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2010.11.042
Margolis, E.Q. and Balmat, J. 2009. Fire history and fire-climate relationships along a fire regime gradient in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, New Mexico, USA. Forest Ecology & Management 258:2416-2430. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2009.08.019
Farris, C.A., E.Q. Margolis, and J.A. Kupfer. 2008. Spatial Characteristics of Fire Severity Patches in Relation to Fire Growth in a Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forest. In: Proceedings: Managing Fire and Fuels in the Remaining Wildlands and Open Spaces of the Southwestern United States. U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station PSW-GTR-189. http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr189/psw_gtr189_175-184_farris.pdf
Margolis, E.Q., Swetnam, T.W. and Allen C.D. 2007. A stand-replacing fire history in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 37:2227-2241. http://doi.org/10.1139/X07-079
Date published: May 30, 2017
Changing fire regimes in the southwestern U.S. – implications for forest management and endangered species
This article is part of the Spring 2017 issue of the Earth Science Matters Newsletter.
Attribution: Climate Research and Development Program