Brian Buma
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, CO·Ecology & Evolution
Boreal forests ring the far north and lock away huge amounts of carbon in their trees and soils. As the climate warms, wildfires there are becoming more frequent.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
boreal forest
wildfire
fire ecology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Reconstruct the history of short-interval fires in boreal forests over thousands of years by analyzing charcoal records in new and existing lake sediment cores.
- Test through field surveys whether today's frequent reburning creates new forest structures and species mixes that differ from historical forests.
- Simulate how fire behaves in these new forest structures using physics-based fluid dynamics models that capture wind within tree canopies, extended to include boreal soil effects.
- Identify feedbacks and structural thresholds that make boreal forests more or less likely to burn, and project how wildfire and energy balance will respond to climate warming.
More about the research
They now often burn faster than the forests evolved to tolerate, which can cause forest loss and permafrost thaw. What happens next is unknown. If trees fail to regrow after repeated fires, grasses and shrubs could take over. That shift might make the land more flammable, or it might dampen future fires.
Why it matters
Boreal forests store some of Earth's largest carbon stocks, and losing them to frequent fire could release that carbon and thaw permafrost. By showing whether reburned forests become more or less flammable, the work could improve forecasts of future wildfire behavior and of the region's contribution to climate warming. These forecasts could help land managers and climate scientists plan for change in northern forests.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Georgia Seyfried
Oregon State University, OR·Ecology & Evolution
Characterize interactions among regenerating vegetation, soil fertility and microbial communities after single high-severity fires and short-interval reburns in wet western Cascade conifer forests, using field surveys.
Wyatt Oswald
Emerson College, MA·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct past temperatures in northern New England across the end of the Younger Dryas using chironomid insect fossils preserved in lake sediments.
Paulo Brando
Yale University, CT·Ecology & Evolution
Extend a 21-year record of tree growth, mortality, biomass, canopy cover, soil moisture and forest–atmosphere carbon and water exchange at Tanguro, Brazil, to 27 years, to track recovery after repeated fire, drought and windthrow.
The school
University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus: 41 labs on PI Pages, $766M a year on research, 205 research doctorates a year.
More about University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus
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