Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

David L. Peterson

Throughout his career Dave has focused on applications of scientific knowledge to resource management issues, which is one of his motivations for being a career federal research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Geological Survey. His scientific focus is the effects of environmental stress on forest ecosystems, with emphasis on fire ecology and climatic change. Understanding and managing ecosystems at large spatial and temporal scales is a huge challenge for natural resource management, and most of his research has been focused at these large scales. The ecological scale paradigm is central to nearly all his scientific efforts.

Dave works at the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station in Seattle. As Team Leader for the Fire and Environmental Research Applications team, he develops new products and information that will assist fire managers in the United States. This work is supported by the National Fire Plan and Joint Fire Science Program, with a focus on improved fire and fuels management on public lands.

In addition to publishing widely in the peer-reviewed literature, he develops integrated databases and software that characterize fuels and fire activity, including fuelbed properties, combustion, emissions, air quality, and ecological effects. He recently completed a project that developed quantitative guidelines for modifying forest structure in order to reduce crown fire hazard in forests of the interior West. He continues to work on various aspects of fuels and fire ecology related to fuel treatments.

He is also a principal investigator for the Western Mountain Initiative (WMI), a collaborative effort among research programs to quantify responses of mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change in the western U.S. For the past 20 years, his research group has employed a combination of empirical studies and modeling to investigate the response of mountain ecosystems to climatic variability and change, from the marine climate of western Washington to the continental climate of western Montana. Regional-scale research has focused primarily on the ecology of subalpine forest ecosystems, effects of climatic variability on tree growth and regeneration, and fire-climate interactions. Recent research focuses on fire-climate relationships across all ecoregions of the western U.S.

Dave also serves as Professor in the College of Forest Resources, University of Washington, and participates in their graduate research and teaching programs. Along with Don McKenzie, he directs the Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab in the College, where he oversees the work of graduate students, postdocs, and professional staff. Lab research activities are supported by the Forest Service, other federal agencies, and UW Climate Impacts Group.

If you are interested in employment or graduate research opportunities with the Forest Service Fire Lab or with the UW Fire and Mountain Ecology Lab, please contact Dave via email.

Curriculum Vitae [.html][.pdf]