Jon Keeley
Biography
Dr. Keeley is currently a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, stationed at Sequoia National Park. Prior to this appointment, he served one year in Washington, D.C. as director of the ecology program for the National Science Foundation. He was professor of biology at Occidental College for 20 years and spent a sabbatical year at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He has more than 350 publications in national and international scientific journals and books. His research has focused on ecological impacts of wildfires as well as other aspects of plant ecology, including rare plants, rare habitats such as vernal pools, and plant physiology. In 1985 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America and an Honorary Lifetime Member of the California Botanical Society. He has served on the Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning Environmental Review Board, and the State of California Natural Communities Conservation Program (NCCP) Board of Scientific Advisors.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D. (Botany) University of Georgia, Athens, 1977
- M.S. (Biology) San Diego State University, 1973
- B.S. (Biology) San Diego State University, 1971
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Adaptation
- Biodiversity
- Biogeography
- Chaparral Ecology
- Coastal Sage Ecology
- Community ecology
- Conservation biology
- Ecotone
- Endangered habitat
- Environmental impacts
- Evolution
- Extinction
- Fire ecology
- Forest ecology
- Global change biology
- Grassland Ecology
- Historical Reconstruction
- Invasive species ecology
- Landscape ecology
- Landscape patterns
- Natural history
- Phylogeny
- Physiological plant ecology
- Plant ecology
- Plant taxonomy
- Population biology
- Restoration ecology
- Species identification
- Species interactions
- Species introduction
- Species inventory
- Species/Population management
- Systematics
- Vegetation classification
- Vernal Pool Conservation
- Vernal Pool Ecology
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- U.S. Geological Survey, Western Ecological Research Center, Research Scientist
- (ST Scientist), 2015–present
- (GS series 0408), 1998–present
- University of California, Los Angeles, Adjunct Full Professor, 2001-present
- Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Research Associate, 1997–present
- National Science Foundation, Program Director 1997–1998
- Occidental College,
- Professor 1988–1998
- Department Chair 1982–1988
- Assist/Assoc Professor 1977–1988
- University of Cape Town, Visiting Professor 1990
AWARDS
- Fellow, Ecological Society of America, 2014
- Distinguished MEDECOS Fellow, 2011
- USGS Performance Award, 2011
- USGS Star Award, 2008
- Honorary Lifetime Member, California Botanical Society, 1998
- Fellow, Southern California Academy of Sciences, l994
- Guggenheim Fellow, l985–l986
- Sterling Award for Outstanding Teaching, l985
Science and Products
WERC Fire Science
WERC scientists are defining the past, present, and future of wildfires for wildlife and human communities. Explore this webpage to learn about specific, ongoing projects across California and parts of Nevada.
Southern California Wildfire Risk Scenario Project
Every year, wildfires devastate the landscapes of Southern California from Los Angeles to San Diego. How has a higher number of human-caused fires affected fire hazards and threats to resources? WERC’s Dr. Jon Keeley and collaborators are analyzing fire patterns across the state to help cities balance their management of fire hazards and natural resources.
Invasive Plants and Fire
Fire has had a very different influence on the forests and shrublands of California. Unlike the case in many forests where fires have been excluded for over a century, shrublands throughout the state have experienced the opposite impact. Invasive grasses that burn more readily than native plants have increased the frequency of wildfires in southern California shrublands. As fire clears swathes...
Environmental Change and Fire
The effects of a changing environment can ripple throughout an ecosystem. Increased temperatures and more frequent and severe droughts in the future may influence wildfire patterns as well as water resources for communities. Dr. Jon Keeley and partners are using nearly a century’s worth of fire data to aid local landowners, and state and Federal agencies in planning for wildfire on evolving...
Balancing Fire Hazards and Resource Protection
Human impacts on fires across California have been quite diverse. In many forests, fires have been nearly excluded over the past century, causing an unhealthy accumulation of dead vegetation and a greater threat of severe fires. However, on much of California’s lower elevation foothills and valleys, humans have greatly increased fire frequency. These landscapes are often juxtaposed with...
Sequoia and Kings Canyon Field Station
The Sequoia and Kings Canyon Field Station is home to research programs that focus on wildfire patterns in Southern California, and the effects of drought on Sierra Nevada forests. Select the "Science" tab for a more comprehensive summary.
Factors associated with structure loss in the 2013–2018 California wildfires
Tens of thousands of structures and hundreds of human lives have been lost in recent fire events throughout California. Given the potential for these types of wildfires to continue, the need to understand why and how structures are being destroyed has taken on a new level of urgency. We compiled and analyzed an extensive dataset of building...
Syphard, Alexandra D.; Keeley, Jon Twenty-first century California, USA, wildfires: Fuel-dominated vs. wind-dominated fires
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century California, USA, has experienced a substantial increase in the frequency of large wildfires, often with extreme impacts on people and property. Due to the size of the state, it is not surprising that the factors driving these changes differ across this region. Although there are always multiple...
Keeley, Jon; Syphard, Alexandra D. Negative impacts of summer heat on Sierra Nevada tree seedlings
Understanding the response of forests to climate change is important for predicting changes in biodiversity and ecosystem services, including carbon storage. Seedlings represent a key demographic stage in these responses, because seedling establishment is necessary for population persistence and spread, and because the conditions allowing...
Moran, Emily V; Das, Adrian J.; Keeley, Jon; Stephenson, Nathan L. Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Wildfires are often viewed as destructive disturbances. We propose that when including both evolutionary and socioecological scales, most ecosystem fires can be understood as natural processes that provide a variety of benefits to humankind. Wildfires provide open habitats that enable the evolution of a diversity of shade-intolerant plants and...
Pausas, Juli G.; Keeley, Jon Distinguishing disturbance from perturbations in fire-prone ecosystems
Fire is a necessary ecosystem process in many biomes and is best viewed as a natural disturbance that is beneficial to ecosystem functioning. However, increasingly we are seeing human interference in fire regimes that alter the historical range of variability for most fire parameters and result in vegetation shifts. Such perturbations can affect...
Keeley, Jon; Pausas, Juli G. Drivers of chaparral type conversion to herbaceous vegetation in coastal Southern California
AimIn Southern California, native woody shrublands known as chaparral support exceptional biodiversity. However, large‐scale conversion of chaparral into largely exotic herbaceous cover is a major ecological threat and serious conservation concern. Due to substantial uncertainty regarding the causes and extent of this vegetation change, we aimed...
Syphard, Alexandra D.; Brennan, Teresa J.; Keeley, Jon E. Historical patterns of wildfire ignition sources in California ecosystems
State and federal agencies have reported fire causes since the early 1900s, explicitly for the purpose of helping land managers design fire-prevention programs. We document fire-ignition patterns in five homogenous climate divisions in California over the past 98 years on state Cal Fire protected lands and 107 years on federal United States Forest...
Keeley, Jon E.; Syphard, Alexandra D. Drivers of chaparral plant diversity
Chaparral diversity has marked spatial and temporal variation. Evolutionary diversity at the genetic, specific, and lineage level contribute to a very diverse flora. Ecological diversity is evident in life histories that comprise a range of physiological and morphological strategies for dealing with drought, and demographic patterns centered...
Underwood, Emma C.; Safford, Hugh D.; Molinari, Nicole A.; Keeley, Jon E.; Keeley, Jon E. Native peoples’ relationship to the California chaparral
Ethnographic interviews and historical literature reviews provide evidence that for many tribes of California, chaparral plant communities were a rich source of food, medicines, and technologies and that they supplemented natural fires with deliberate burning of chaparral to maximize its ability to produce useful products. Many of the most...
Underwood, Emma C.; Safford, Hugh D.; Molinari, Nicole A.; Keeley, Jon E.; Anderson, M. Kat; Keeley, Jon E. Human presence diminishes the importance of climate in driving fire activity across the United States
Growing human and ecological costs due to increasing wildfire are an urgent concern in policy and management, particularly given projections of worsening fire conditions under climate change. Thus, understanding the relationship between climatic variation and fire activity is a critically important scientific question. Different factors limit fire...
Syphard, Alexandra D.; Keeley, Jon E.; Pfaff, Anne Hopkins; Ferschweiler, Ken Characters in Arctostaphylos taxonomy
There is value in understanding the past and how it has affected the present. Science focuses on empirical findings, and we know that our prior experiences and those of our predecessors play important roles in determining how we interpret the present. We learn from accomplishments and foibles of predecessors and appreciate the real life...
Keeley, Jon E.; Parker, V. Thomas; Vasey, Michael C. Why were California's wine country fires so destructive?
As of late October more than a dozen wildfires north of San Francisco had killed more than 40 people, burned approximately 160,000 acres and destroyed more than 7,000 structures.This tragic loss of life and property is unprecedented in California. However, the fires are not anomalous events in terms of their size, intensity or the speed with which...
Keeley, Jon E.Living with Fire: The USGS Southern California Wildfire Risk Project
Southern California's fire ecology is unlike that of anywhere else in the United States. Fire control strategies developed for mountain forests don't have the same results here. So can science help uncover new answers to help Southern California communities manage and live with wildfires? This 11 minute film showcases ongoing USGS research supporting agencies on the
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USGS Film: Living with Fire
A screenshot from the USGS film "Living with Fire".
"Living with Fire" is a 11-minute USGS production exploring ongoing USGS research on wildfire science in southern California -- where the fire ecology is unlike any other region in the United States.
USGS is investigating ways to balance community fire risk management and native habitat conservation as part
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New USGS research on 21st century California wildfires examines drivers of fire behavior and structure losses
Two new publications underscore the role of wind in destructive California wildfires
On Fire, Out West (NPR)
NAPA, SONOMA COUNTIES — As the Tubbs, Atlas, and Nuns fires raged across northern California, WERC's Jon Keeley appeared on NPR to provide insight into fire ecology across the state.