Emily Heyerdahl is a Research Forester at the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab. She has degrees in geology (B.S., Oregon State University), atmospheric sciences (M.S., University of Washington), and forest ecology (Ph.D., University of Washington). She is on the affiliate faculty of the University of Idaho and the adjunct faculty of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She serves on the Board of Directors of the International Multiproxy Paleofire Database .

Emily’s research focuses on inferring the drivers of spatial and temporal variation in fire regimes over the past several centuries using tree rings and modern fire records. These drivers include climate, forest type, topography, and land use.  She has developed fire and forest histories across a range of forest and fire regime types in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Utah, California, British Columbia Canada and the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico.

Aside from tree rings, Emily's passions are her family, hiking, backpacking, and sea kayaking.

Research:

Fire regimes & forest structure of Utah & eastern Nevada: A multi-scale history from tree rings
Climate drivers of fire in the Northern Rockies: Past, present and future
Historical fire regimes in forest fringe of the Willamette Valley, Oregon
Historical mixed-severity fire regimes in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada

Publications:

Heyerdahl, E.K. 1991. Dendro climatically reconstructible parameters and fire history in Washington. M.S. thesis. Seattle: University of Washington. 93 p.

Heyerdahl, E.K., D. Berry, and J.K. Agee. 1995. Fire history database of the western United States. EPA/600/R-96/081. Washington, DC: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 51 p. + maps.

Heyerdahl, E.K. 1997. Spatial and temporal variation in historical fire regimes of the Blue Mountains, Oregon and Washington: the influence of climate. Ph.D. dissertation. Seattle: University of Washington. 224 p.

Heyerdahl, E.K., V. Card. 1999. Implications of paleorecords for ecosystem management. Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 15:49-50.

Heyerdahl, E.K., L.B. Brubaker, and J.K. Agee. 2001. Spatial controls of historical fire regimes: a multiscale example from the Interior West, USA. Ecology. 82:660-678.

Heyerdahl, E.K. and S.J. McKay. 2001. Condition of live, fire-scarred ponderosa pine trees, six years after removing partial cross sections. Tree-Ring Research. 57:131-139.

Heyerdahl, E.K., L.B. Brubaker and J.K. Agee. 2002. Annual and decadal climate forcing of historical fire regimes in the interior Pacific Northwest, USA. The Holocene. 12:597-604.

Heyerdahl, E.K. and E. Alvarado. 2003. Influence of climate and land use on historical surface fires in pine-oak forests, Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico. Pages 196-217 in: Fire and climatic change in temperate ecosystems of the western Americas. eds. T.T. Veblen, W.L. Baker, G. Montenegro and T.W. Swetnam. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Lepofsky, D., E. K. Heyerdahl, K. Lertzman, D. Schaepe, and B. Mierendorf. 2003. Historical meadow dynamics in southwest British Columbia: A multidisciplinary analysis. Conservation Ecology 7: 5. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art5

Heyerdahl, E.K., R.F. Miller, and R.A. Parsons. 2006. History of fire and Douglas-fir establishment in a savanna and sagebrush-grassland mosaic, southwestern Montana, USA. Forest Ecology and Management. 230:107-118.

Gayton, D.V., W.H. Weber, M. Harrington, E.K. Heyerdahl, E.K. Sutherland, B. Brett, C. Hall, M. Hartman, L. Peterson, and C. Merrel. 2006. Fire history of a western Montana ponderosa pine grassland: A pilot study. Indiana State University, Department of Geography, Geology, and Anthropology. Professional Paper Series No. 23. pp. 30-36.

Kitzberger T., P.M. Brown, E.K. Heyerdahl, T.W. Swetnam, and T.T. Veblen. 2007. Contingent Pacific-Atlantic Ocean influence on multi-century wildfire synchrony over western North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104:543-548.

Heyerdahl, E.K., K. Lertzman, and S. Karpuk. 2007. Local-scale controls of a low-severity fire regime (1750-1950), southern British Columbia, Canada. Écoscience. 14:40-47.

Parsons RA, Heyerdahl E.K., Keane RE, Dorner B, Fall J. 2007. Assessing the accuracy of surface fire histories: Simulation modeling of point fire frequency across landscapes. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 37:1605-1614.

Shapiro-Miller, L.B., E.K. Heyerdahl, and P. Morgan. 2007. Comparison of fire scars, fire atlases, and satellite data in the northwestern United States. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 37:1933-1943.

The following publications will be in print within the next month or so:

Heyerdahl, E.K., D. McKenzie, L.D. Daniels, A.E. Hessl, J.S. Littell, and N.J. Mantua 2008 Climate drivers of regionally synchronous fires in the inland Northwest (1651-1900).  International Journal of  Wildland Fire. 17:40-49.

Brown, P.M., E.K. Heyerdahl, S.G. Kitchen, and M.H. Weber.  2008 Climate effects on historical fires (1630-1900) in Utah.  International Journal of Wildland Fire. 17:28-39.

Heyerdahl, E.K., P. Morgan, and J.P. Riser II. 2008.  Multi-season climate synchronized historical fires in dry forests (1650-1900), Northern Rockies, USA.  Ecology.  89:705-716.

Morgan, P., E.K. Heyerdahl, and C.E. Gibson. 2008. Multi-season climate synchronized forest fires throughout the 20th-century, Northern Rockies, USA.  Ecology.  89:717-728.

Miller, R.F. and E.K. Heyerdahl.  2008.  Fine-scale variation of historical fire regimes in sagebrush-steppe and juniper woodland:  An example from California, USA.  International Journal of Wildland Fire.  17:245-254.