Carl Key

Expertise:

• Fire ecology
• General plant, animal and landscape ecology
• Remote sensing models and applications

Research Interests:
Recent research includes development and evaluation of remote sensing methodologies for remote sensing of wildland fire severity. Work facilitates design and implementation of national programs for fire effects mapping and monitoring, including the USGS-National Park Service Burn Severity Mapping Project, and Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity sponsored by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council. I continue to be interested in validation and appropriate use of the differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR), a now widely used Landsat-based index developed in Glacier during the mid-1990's, providing spatial data on how strongly fire alters an area compared to pre-fire conditions. Linked to that is interest in fire effects on the ground (aka. forensic ecology) in various ecosystems with partners in North America and around the World. Our Composite Burn Index (CBI), a field sampling approach also widely used, summarizes multiple burn conditions over a site. I hope to apply such techniques to better understand fire traits and trends, to model or evaluate vegetation and animal responses both detrimental and beneficial, and foster new studies in landscape fire ecology.