Lisa M. Holsinger

Currently, I am working in three major aspects of landscape ecology.  I am investigating landscape connectivity, particularly between protected areas, to map and identify potential corridors for plant and wildlife species, under a warming climate. I am implementing the landscape ecology model FireBGCv2 to better understand the relationships between a changing climate, fire regimes, vegetation and fuel management - in many ecoregions across the Rocky Mountains and in Alaska. Lastly, I am working towards developing remote sensing methods, primarily using Google Earth Engine, with the goal of improving our ability to measure landscape level processes, such as fire disturbance and severity, and fire-facilitated conversion of forest to non-forest. 

• Developing methods to predict distribution and abundance of forest species using bioclimatic modeling.
• The influence of weather, fuels, and topography in impeding fire spread in the western US.
• Using landscape modeling to evaluate fire and fish population dynamics to predict thresholds in fire risk and scales at which to expect recovery in stream temperatures and fish communities.
• Fuel treatment effects in major habitat types of the northern Rocky Mountains using the Fire and Fuels Extension to the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS).

• Climate change connectivity, including climate analogs, climate exposure, and climate corridors.
• The landscape ecology of ecosystem processes, especially disturbance, climate, and vegetation, and the scales at which these processes interact. 
• Remote sensing methods to evaluate fire effects and spread.