TGI Friday Seminar: Fire, Climate, and Society in the Ancient Southwestern US
Who: Dr. Christopher Roos, Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University
When: Friday, September 4th, 3-4 PM
Where: EESAT 130
Why? In the Southwest US, a century of fire suppression has turned old growth forests into tinderboxes that burn in increasingly destructive ways as the climate warms. But do all fire-climate-society relationships conform to this story? Southwestern pine forests have been home to American Indian communities for millennia. How did these communities cope with - and impact - these flammable forests through variable climates? What lessons might we learn from these experiences?
Dr. Christopher Roos brings archaeological, dendrochronological, and paleoecological information together to weave a story of human and climatic impacts on Arizona's fire-prone forests over the last millennium to illuminate pathways towards stainable fire-climate-society relationships.