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
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...
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...
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...
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...
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, ChristopherValleys 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, EllisDendrochronology 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.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 CClimate 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.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.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, EllisLimits 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, Ellisburnr: 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, EllisAdvancing 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.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.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.Pre-USGS Publications
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.