Postdoctoral Research (2006 - present):

Spatial and temporal evolution of late Holocene fire regimes in subalpine forests, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado (National Park Ecological Research Fellowship - PDF of proposal)

Link to September 2007 field photos, Rocky Mountain National Park Link to September 2006 field photos, Rocky Mountain National Park Link to July 2006 field photos, Rocky Mountain National Park

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Reconstructing fire regimes in tundra ecosystems to inform a management-oriented ecosystem model (Joint Fire Science Program grant to Hu et al. - PDF of proposal)

Link to 2007 field photos, Noatak National Preserve, Alaska

Participation in this project is as a postdoctoral researcher in Feng Sheng Hu's Quaternary Ecology Lab at  the University of Illinois.

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Impacts of climate change on the boreal-forest fire regimes of Alaska: lessons from the past and prospects for the future (National Science Foundation grant to Hu et al. - PDF of proposal)

Link to 2007 field photos, Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge Link to 2007 field photos, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge

Participation in this project is as a postdoctoral researcher in Feng Sheng Hu's Quaternary Ecology Lab at   he University of Illinois.

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Dissertation (2002-2006):

Late Glacial and Holocene Fire History in the Southcentral Brooks Range, Alaska: Direct and Indirect Impacts of Climatic Change on Fire Regimes.

Link to 2003 field photos, Gates of the Arctic National Park and region Link to 2002 field photos, Gates of the Arctic National Park and region Link to 2001 field photos, Gates of the Arctic National Park and region

My Ph.D. research was funded through an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and an NSF-funded project titled: An integrated approach to understanding the role of climate-vegetation-fire interactions in boreal forests responses to climatic change. This project involved investigators from three universities and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. The PIs include: Linda Brubaker and Pat Anderson (UW), Feng Sheng Hu (U of IL), Scott Rupp (U of AK, Fairbanks) and Tom Brown (LLNL, CAMS).

My dissertation focused on: (1) reconstructing vegetation and fire history at a network of sites across the southern Brooks Range to understand how fire regimes have evolved over the past 15,000 years in relation to climate and vegetation, and (2) modeling sediment charcoal records to improve fire-history interpretations.

Publications related to this work:

Higuera, P.E., L.B. Brubaker, P.M. Anderson, F.S. Hu, T. A. Brown.
Vegetation mediated the impacts of postglacial climatic change on fire regimes in the southcentral Brooks Range, Alaska. In review.

Higuera, P.E., L.B. Brubaker, P.M. Anderson, T. A. Brown, A. T. Kennedy, and F.S. Hu. 2008. Frequent fires in ancient shrub tundra: implications of paleo-records for Arctic environmental change. PLoS ONE, 3: e0001744.   
 
Higuera, P.E., Peters, M.E., Brubaker, L.B., and D.G. Gavin. 2007. Understanding the origin and analysis of sediment charcoal records with a simulation model. Quaternary Science Reviews, 26: 1790-1809  [pdf]
 
Peters, M.E., and P.E. Higuera. 2007 Quantifying the source area of macroscopic charcoal with a particle dispersal model. Quaternary Research, 67: 304-310. [pdf]

Hu, F.S., Brubaker, L.B., Gavin, D.G., Higuera, P.E., Lynch, J.A., Rupp, T.S., and W. Tinner. 2006. How climate and vegetation influence the fire regime of the Alaskan Boreal Biome: the Holocene perspective. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 11: 829-846. [pdf]

Higuera, P.E. 2006. Late Glacial and Holocene Fire History in the Southcentral Brooks Range, Alaska: Direct and Indirect Impacts of Climatic Change on Fire  Regimes. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle. [pdf]

Masters (1999-2002):

Reconstructing fire regimes with charcoal and pollen from small hollows: a calibration with tree-ring records of fire. 

Publications related to this work:

Sugimura, W., Sprugel, D.G., Brubaker, L.B., and P.E. Higuera. 2008. Millennial-scale changes in local vegetation and fire regimes on Mt. Constitution, Orcas Island, Washington, USA, using small hollow sediments. Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 38: 566-575. [pdf]

Higuera, P.E., Brubaker, L.B., Sprugel, D.G. 2005. Reconstructing fire regimes with charcoal from small hollows: a calibration with tree-ring records of fire. The Holocene, 15: 238-251. [pdf]

Higuera, P. E. 2002. Reconstructing fire regimes with charcoal and pollen from small hollows: a calibration with tree-ring records of fire. Masters Thesis. University of Washington, Seattle. [pdf]