Christopher Roos | Southern Methodist University (original) (raw)

Papers by Christopher Roos

Research paper thumbnail of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Biomarkers from Stratified and Cumulic Soils in Highland Environments of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

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Research paper thumbnail of Fire Suppression Impacts on Fuels and Fire Intensity in the Western U.S.: Insights from Archaeological Luminescence Dating in Northern New Mexico

Fire, 2020

Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire ... more Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire intensities that are unique over more than 900 years of record in ponderosa pine forests (Pinus ponderosa). Specifically, we use the heat-sensitive luminescence signal of archaeological ceramics and tree-ring fire histories to show that a recent fire during mild weather conditions was more intense than anything experienced in centuries of frequent wildfires. We support this with a particularly robust set of optically stimulated luminescence measurements on pottery from an archaeological site in northern New Mexico. The heating effects of an October 2012 CE prescribed fire reset the luminescence signal in all 12 surface samples of archaeological ceramics, whereas none of the 10 samples exposed to at least 14 previous fires (1696–1893 CE) revealed any evidence of past thermal impact. This was true regardless of the fire behavior contexts of the 2012 CE samples (crown, surface, and smolderi...

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Research paper thumbnail of Is Anthropogenic Pyrodiversity Invisible in Paleofire Records?

Fire, 2019

Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Global... more Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Globally, we know that a common pattern of anthropogenic burning regimes is to burn many small patches at high frequency, thereby generating landscape heterogeneity. Is this type of anthropogenic pyrodiversity necessarily obscured in paleofire records because of fundamental limitations of those records? We evaluate this with a cellular automata model designed to replicate different fire regimes with identical fire rotations but different fire frequencies and patchiness. Our results indicate that high frequency patch burning can be identified in tree-ring records at relatively modest sampling intensities. However, standard methods that filter out fires represented by few trees systematically biases the records against patch burning. In simulated fire regime shifts, fading records, sample size, and the contrast between the shifted fire regimes all interact to make statistical identification of r...

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Research paper thumbnail of A comparison of charcoal reflectance between crown and surface fire contexts in dry south-west USA forests

International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2018

The historical and modern importance of crown fires in ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer fores... more The historical and modern importance of crown fires in ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forests of the south-west USA has been much debated. The microscopic reflectance of charcoal in polished blocks under oil shows promise as a semiquantitative proxy for fire severity using charcoal from post-fire landscapes. We measured the reflectance of 33 modern charcoal samples to evaluate (1) whether charcoal reflectance can distinguish between crown fires and surface fires in these forests; and (2) whether surface fires with masticated fuels burn with severities similar to surface fires in grass, litter and duff fuels. The charcoal analysed was primarily collected after wildland fires under two different conditions: (l) wildfires with moderate to high severity and crown fire behaviour (n = 17), and (2) prescribed fires with low to moderate severity but no crown fire behaviour (n = 16). Statistical analysis indicates that charcoal reflectance produced in crown fires significantly differs ...

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Research paper thumbnail of Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 7, 2018

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the glo... more Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate-fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate-fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial depo...

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Research paper thumbnail of Anthropogenic Landscapes

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

It has been suggested that anthropogenic burning may have altered Southwest landscapes at a large... more It has been suggested that anthropogenic burning may have altered Southwest landscapes at a large scale. Southwestern biomes vary in their propensity for and their susceptibility to anthropogenic burning practices. Anthropogenic burning to enhance the productivity of wild plant foraging or agriculture was probably limited in scale; on the other hand, fire use in hunting, religious practice, and warfare may have impacted larger scales, though at lower intensity. Middle-elevation forests, woodlands, and grasslands were the biotic zones most likely to be impacted by anthropogenic burning, but sophisticated mimicry of natural fire regimes means that the evidence of such impact is ambiguous.

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Research paper thumbnail of Geoarchaeology of ritual behavior and sacred places: an introduction

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2017

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Research paper thumbnail of Anthropogenic Burning, Agricultural Intensification, and Landscape Transformation in Post-Lapita Fiji

Journal of Ethnobiology, 2016

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Research paper thumbnail of Wildfire risk as a socioecological pathology

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2016

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Research paper thumbnail of Sigatoka Valley Revisited: Preliminary Results from the Post-Lapita Subsistence Transition Project

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Research paper thumbnail of Multiscale perspectives of fire, climate and humans in western North America and the Jemez Mountains, USA

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Interannual climate variations have been important drivers of wildfire occurrence in ponderosa pi... more Interannual climate variations have been important drivers of wildfire occurrence in ponderosa pine forests across western North America for at least 400 years, but at finer scales of mountain ranges and landscapes human land uses sometimes over-rode climate influences. We reconstruct and analyse effects of high human population densities in forests of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico from ca 1300 CE to Present. Prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, human land uses reduced the occurrence of widespread fires while simultaneously adding more ignitions resulting in many small-extent fires. During the 18th and 19th centuries, wet/dry oscillations and their effects on fuels dynamics controlled widespread fire occurrence. In the late 19th century, intensive livestock grazing disrupted fuels continuity and fire spread and then active fire suppression maintained the absence of widespread surface fires during most of the 20th century. The abundance and continuity of fuels is the most important con...

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Research paper thumbnail of The interaction of fire and mankind: Introduction

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fier... more Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fiery world and are the only animals to have used and controlled fire. The interaction of mankind with fire is a complex one, with both positive and negative aspects. Humans have long used fire for heating, cooking, landscape management and agriculture, as well as for pyrotechnologies and in industrial processes over more recent centuries. Many landscapes need fire but population expansion into wildland areas creates a tension between different interest groups. Extinguishing wildfires may not always be the correct solution. A combination of factors, including the problem of invasive plants, landscape change, climate change, population growth, human health, economic, social and cultural attitudes that may be transnational make a re-evaluation of fire and mankind necessary. The Royal Society meeting on Fire and mankind was held to address these issues and the results of these deliberations are...

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Research paper thumbnail of Global combustion: the connection between fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions (1997-2010)

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling t... more Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling the industrial economy. As a shift to fossil-fuel-based energy occurs, we expect that anthropogenic biomass burning in open landscapes will decline as it becomes less fundamental to energy acquisition and livelihoods. Using global data on both fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions, we tested this relationship over a 14 year period (1997-2010). The global average annual carbon emissions from biomass burning during this time were 2.2 Pg C per year (±0.3 s.d.), approximately one-third of fossil fuel emissions over the same period (7.3 Pg C, ±0.8 s.d.). There was a significant inverse relationship between average annual fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. Fossil fuel emissions explained 8% of the variation in biomass burning emissions at a global scale, but this varied substantially by land cover. For example, fossil fuel burning explained 31% of the variation in biomass burning in...

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Research paper thumbnail of Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-econom... more Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management challenges for countries that have diminishing fire knowledge, but for whom global climate change will bring new fire problems. Finally, we assessed major fire challenges that transcend national political boundaries, including the health burden of smoke plumes and the climate consequences of wildfires. It is clear that to best address the broad range of fire problems, a holistic wildfire scholarship...

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Research paper thumbnail of Native American depopulation, reforestation, and fire regimes in the Southwest United States, 1492–1900 CE

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016

Significance Debates about the magnitude, tempo, and ecological effects of Native American depopu... more Significance Debates about the magnitude, tempo, and ecological effects of Native American depopulation after 1492 CE constitute some of the most contentious issues in American Indian history. Was population decline rapid and catastrophic, with effects extensive enough to change even the earth’s atmosphere? Or was depopulation more moderate, with indigenous numbers declining slowly after European colonization? Through a study of archaeology and dendrochronology, we conclude that neither of these scenarios accurately characterizes Pueblo peoples in the Southwest United States. Among the Jemez pueblos of New Mexico, depopulation struck swiftly and irrevocably, but occurred nearly a century after first contact with Europeans. This population crash subsequently altered the local environment, spurring the growth of trees and facilitating the spread of frequent forest fires.

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Research paper thumbnail of Environmental Reconstruction in Archaeological Science

Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014

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Research paper thumbnail of The role of raw material differences in stone tool shape variation: an experimental assessment

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2014

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Research paper thumbnail of Inadvertent Vandalism The Hidden Challenge for Heritage Resource Management

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Research paper thumbnail of A 1416-year reconstruction of annual, multidecadal, and centennial variability in area burned for ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau region, Southwest USA

The Holocene, 2011

Fire history reconstructions from fire scars in tree rings have been valuable for assessing fire ... more Fire history reconstructions from fire scars in tree rings have been valuable for assessing fire regime changes and their climatic controls. It has been asserted, however, that these two- to four-century long records from the western USA are unrepresentative of longer periods of the Holocene and are of limited use for understanding current or future fire regimes. The Medieval Climate Anomaly (800–1300 ce) is often suggested as a better analog for future Southwestern US climates but is beyond the chronological range of most fire-scar studies in this region. To evaluate fire regime changes over the past millennium, we build on centennial-length fire–climate studies to generate a 1416 year long reconstruction of fire activity in ponderosa pine forests of the Southern Colorado Plateau region of Arizona and New Mexico. We used a split-period calibration and verification protocol to test the reliability of a multiple regression model using annual and antecedent precipitation (reconstructe...

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Research paper thumbnail of Pyrogeography, historical ecology, and the human dimensions of fire regimes

Journal of Biogeography, 2014

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Research paper thumbnail of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Biomarkers from Stratified and Cumulic Soils in Highland Environments of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Fire Suppression Impacts on Fuels and Fire Intensity in the Western U.S.: Insights from Archaeological Luminescence Dating in Northern New Mexico

Fire, 2020

Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire ... more Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire intensities that are unique over more than 900 years of record in ponderosa pine forests (Pinus ponderosa). Specifically, we use the heat-sensitive luminescence signal of archaeological ceramics and tree-ring fire histories to show that a recent fire during mild weather conditions was more intense than anything experienced in centuries of frequent wildfires. We support this with a particularly robust set of optically stimulated luminescence measurements on pottery from an archaeological site in northern New Mexico. The heating effects of an October 2012 CE prescribed fire reset the luminescence signal in all 12 surface samples of archaeological ceramics, whereas none of the 10 samples exposed to at least 14 previous fires (1696–1893 CE) revealed any evidence of past thermal impact. This was true regardless of the fire behavior contexts of the 2012 CE samples (crown, surface, and smolderi...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Is Anthropogenic Pyrodiversity Invisible in Paleofire Records?

Fire, 2019

Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Global... more Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Globally, we know that a common pattern of anthropogenic burning regimes is to burn many small patches at high frequency, thereby generating landscape heterogeneity. Is this type of anthropogenic pyrodiversity necessarily obscured in paleofire records because of fundamental limitations of those records? We evaluate this with a cellular automata model designed to replicate different fire regimes with identical fire rotations but different fire frequencies and patchiness. Our results indicate that high frequency patch burning can be identified in tree-ring records at relatively modest sampling intensities. However, standard methods that filter out fires represented by few trees systematically biases the records against patch burning. In simulated fire regime shifts, fading records, sample size, and the contrast between the shifted fire regimes all interact to make statistical identification of r...

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Research paper thumbnail of A comparison of charcoal reflectance between crown and surface fire contexts in dry south-west USA forests

International Journal of Wildland Fire, 2018

The historical and modern importance of crown fires in ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer fores... more The historical and modern importance of crown fires in ponderosa pine and dry mixed-conifer forests of the south-west USA has been much debated. The microscopic reflectance of charcoal in polished blocks under oil shows promise as a semiquantitative proxy for fire severity using charcoal from post-fire landscapes. We measured the reflectance of 33 modern charcoal samples to evaluate (1) whether charcoal reflectance can distinguish between crown fires and surface fires in these forests; and (2) whether surface fires with masticated fuels burn with severities similar to surface fires in grass, litter and duff fuels. The charcoal analysed was primarily collected after wildland fires under two different conditions: (l) wildfires with moderate to high severity and crown fire behaviour (n = 17), and (2) prescribed fires with low to moderate severity but no crown fire behaviour (n = 16). Statistical analysis indicates that charcoal reflectance produced in crown fires significantly differs ...

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Research paper thumbnail of Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Jan 7, 2018

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the glo... more Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate-fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate-fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial depo...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Anthropogenic Landscapes

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017

It has been suggested that anthropogenic burning may have altered Southwest landscapes at a large... more It has been suggested that anthropogenic burning may have altered Southwest landscapes at a large scale. Southwestern biomes vary in their propensity for and their susceptibility to anthropogenic burning practices. Anthropogenic burning to enhance the productivity of wild plant foraging or agriculture was probably limited in scale; on the other hand, fire use in hunting, religious practice, and warfare may have impacted larger scales, though at lower intensity. Middle-elevation forests, woodlands, and grasslands were the biotic zones most likely to be impacted by anthropogenic burning, but sophisticated mimicry of natural fire regimes means that the evidence of such impact is ambiguous.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Geoarchaeology of ritual behavior and sacred places: an introduction

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2017

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Anthropogenic Burning, Agricultural Intensification, and Landscape Transformation in Post-Lapita Fiji

Journal of Ethnobiology, 2016

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Wildfire risk as a socioecological pathology

Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2016

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Sigatoka Valley Revisited: Preliminary Results from the Post-Lapita Subsistence Transition Project

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Multiscale perspectives of fire, climate and humans in western North America and the Jemez Mountains, USA

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Interannual climate variations have been important drivers of wildfire occurrence in ponderosa pi... more Interannual climate variations have been important drivers of wildfire occurrence in ponderosa pine forests across western North America for at least 400 years, but at finer scales of mountain ranges and landscapes human land uses sometimes over-rode climate influences. We reconstruct and analyse effects of high human population densities in forests of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico from ca 1300 CE to Present. Prior to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, human land uses reduced the occurrence of widespread fires while simultaneously adding more ignitions resulting in many small-extent fires. During the 18th and 19th centuries, wet/dry oscillations and their effects on fuels dynamics controlled widespread fire occurrence. In the late 19th century, intensive livestock grazing disrupted fuels continuity and fire spread and then active fire suppression maintained the absence of widespread surface fires during most of the 20th century. The abundance and continuity of fuels is the most important con...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of The interaction of fire and mankind: Introduction

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fier... more Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fiery world and are the only animals to have used and controlled fire. The interaction of mankind with fire is a complex one, with both positive and negative aspects. Humans have long used fire for heating, cooking, landscape management and agriculture, as well as for pyrotechnologies and in industrial processes over more recent centuries. Many landscapes need fire but population expansion into wildland areas creates a tension between different interest groups. Extinguishing wildfires may not always be the correct solution. A combination of factors, including the problem of invasive plants, landscape change, climate change, population growth, human health, economic, social and cultural attitudes that may be transnational make a re-evaluation of fire and mankind necessary. The Royal Society meeting on Fire and mankind was held to address these issues and the results of these deliberations are...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Global combustion: the connection between fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions (1997-2010)

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling t... more Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling the industrial economy. As a shift to fossil-fuel-based energy occurs, we expect that anthropogenic biomass burning in open landscapes will decline as it becomes less fundamental to energy acquisition and livelihoods. Using global data on both fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions, we tested this relationship over a 14 year period (1997-2010). The global average annual carbon emissions from biomass burning during this time were 2.2 Pg C per year (±0.3 s.d.), approximately one-third of fossil fuel emissions over the same period (7.3 Pg C, ±0.8 s.d.). There was a significant inverse relationship between average annual fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. Fossil fuel emissions explained 8% of the variation in biomass burning emissions at a global scale, but this varied substantially by land cover. For example, fossil fuel burning explained 31% of the variation in biomass burning in...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, Jun 5, 2016

Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-econom... more Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management challenges for countries that have diminishing fire knowledge, but for whom global climate change will bring new fire problems. Finally, we assessed major fire challenges that transcend national political boundaries, including the health burden of smoke plumes and the climate consequences of wildfires. It is clear that to best address the broad range of fire problems, a holistic wildfire scholarship...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Native American depopulation, reforestation, and fire regimes in the Southwest United States, 1492–1900 CE

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2016

Significance Debates about the magnitude, tempo, and ecological effects of Native American depopu... more Significance Debates about the magnitude, tempo, and ecological effects of Native American depopulation after 1492 CE constitute some of the most contentious issues in American Indian history. Was population decline rapid and catastrophic, with effects extensive enough to change even the earth’s atmosphere? Or was depopulation more moderate, with indigenous numbers declining slowly after European colonization? Through a study of archaeology and dendrochronology, we conclude that neither of these scenarios accurately characterizes Pueblo peoples in the Southwest United States. Among the Jemez pueblos of New Mexico, depopulation struck swiftly and irrevocably, but occurred nearly a century after first contact with Europeans. This population crash subsequently altered the local environment, spurring the growth of trees and facilitating the spread of frequent forest fires.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Environmental Reconstruction in Archaeological Science

Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology, 2014

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of The role of raw material differences in stone tool shape variation: an experimental assessment

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2014

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Inadvertent Vandalism The Hidden Challenge for Heritage Resource Management

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of A 1416-year reconstruction of annual, multidecadal, and centennial variability in area burned for ponderosa pine forests of the southern Colorado Plateau region, Southwest USA

The Holocene, 2011

Fire history reconstructions from fire scars in tree rings have been valuable for assessing fire ... more Fire history reconstructions from fire scars in tree rings have been valuable for assessing fire regime changes and their climatic controls. It has been asserted, however, that these two- to four-century long records from the western USA are unrepresentative of longer periods of the Holocene and are of limited use for understanding current or future fire regimes. The Medieval Climate Anomaly (800–1300 ce) is often suggested as a better analog for future Southwestern US climates but is beyond the chronological range of most fire-scar studies in this region. To evaluate fire regime changes over the past millennium, we build on centennial-length fire–climate studies to generate a 1416 year long reconstruction of fire activity in ponderosa pine forests of the Southern Colorado Plateau region of Arizona and New Mexico. We used a split-period calibration and verification protocol to test the reliability of a multiple regression model using annual and antecedent precipitation (reconstructe...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Pyrogeography, historical ecology, and the human dimensions of fire regimes

Journal of Biogeography, 2014

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact