Jose Iniguez

1. Assessing the impacts of multiple fires on age and spatial tree patterns in the Gila National Forest.
2. Assessing tree spatial patterns, patch size and other landscape attributes related to reference/historical conditions in an un-harvested experimental forest.
3. Comparing pre and post wildfire forest conditions across burned landscapes in the sky islands of southeastern Arizona.

One aspect that is unique to the United States in terms of land management is the concept of public lands. That is, lands that are managed for the good of the people. Public lands are a critical part of American life; therefore it is the responsibility of land management agencies to sustain these lands for current and future generations. A critical part of managing for sustainability is understanding the historical processes (including disturbances) that our current ecosystems evolved with. Our job as scientists is to provide managers information, knowledge and advice that will allow them to make land management decisions that will result in healthy and sustainable forest.

My research interests are in understanding how fire impacts forested ecosystems across temporal and spatial scales. Working at large spatial scales is facilitated by also expanding the temporal scale. I use dendrochronological techniques that allow me to re-construct fire history and age structure patterns both in stands and across landscapes. The next step is to apply the information we have learned from historical data to contemporary landscapes to restore both forest structure and natural fires.

1. Lead author on a scientific paper titled "Topography affected landscape fire history patterns in southern Arizona" which describes how differences in fire size at the landscape scale impacted fire intervals at the stand level. This work has contributed to our understanding of how fires can be influenced by landscape topography and has led to the development of fire landscape (firescapes) which mangers use when planning and applying fire treatments.
2. Lead author on another scientific paper titled "Temporally and spatially mixed-fire regimes in the Rincon Peak Sky Island" which describes how fire regimes change with time as a result of stand replacing fires that fragment fuels across the landscape isolating certain forest patches. This work has broadened our understanding of landscape fire patterns and how they can be impacted by landscape fuel arrangements and climate change.
3. Developed an identification key and classification system for different cover types in the diverse forest of the sky island region of southeastern Arizona.