Michael Stambaugh
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Earth & Environmental Science
Wildfire patterns, called fire regimes, describe how often, how intensely, and where fires burn in a landscape. They shape forests, affect the supply of timber and other resources, and threaten human safety, health, and property.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
- Topics
wildland fire
fire regimes
fire ecology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2030
What they work on
- Develop improved fire regime models that combine tree-ring fire scar datasets with the Physical Chemistry Fire Frequency Model (PC2FM), which estimates fire frequency from climate and physical-chemistry principles.
- Increase fire regime model accuracy at the operational scales used by managers, by integrating high-resolution data, AI and machine learning, and simulation, and by adding uncertainty measures.
- Connect fire regime data access and modeling tools with education through a game-based platform for informal learning about fire regimes and fire management decision-making.
More about the research
Across North America these patterns have been disrupted by population change, farming, logging, and decades of fire suppression. Gaps in fire history data, models, and training make it hard to predict fire behavior. They also make it hard to decide which areas, especially those with a build-up of burnable fuel, most need treatments such as prescribed burning.
Why it matters
Land managers, fire agencies, and communities near forests need to know where fires are likely and where fuel build-up is risky. Sharper, more certain fire regime models could improve fire risk assessments and help them prioritize prescribed burns and other fuel treatments. They could also improve forecasts of how fire may change, helping protect ecosystems, forest resources, and people's homes and health.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Karen King
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Use quantitative wood anatomy, measurements of individual wood cells in tree rings, to build high-resolution temperature and precipitation records over the last millennium across temperate North America.
Diana Thatcher
Iowa State University, IA·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct annually resolved, millennial-length northeast Pacific sea-surface temperatures from growth increments in shells of the Pacific geoduck, a long-lived marine clam.
Nicole Davi
William Paterson University of New Jersey, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop two 1,000-year records of wood anatomical traits, such as cell wall thickness, frost rings and blue rings, from Siberian larch and Siberian pine in Mongolia to capture brief temperature extremes.
The school
University of Missouri-Columbia: 21 labs on PI Pages, $509M a year on research, 260 research doctorates a year.
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