In this webinar from the Fire Adapted New Mexico learning network, presenter Dr. Thomas Swetnam discusses the long view on fire, forests, and people in the Southwest through the lens of tree rings (dendrochronology) and archaeology.

People have lived within forest landscapes of the Jemez Mountains for centuries. Droughts and wildfires have recurred many times, but ancestral Pueblo populations managed to live within these forests, with no known history of catastrophic fires destroying their villages. In recent decades, however, very large and high intensity wildfires are burning over these landscapes and the ruins of ancestral villages, as well as in modern housing developments. How did Puebloan people live within fire-prone landscapes at relatively high population densities for centuries in what was essentially a sustainable human-natural system? Researchers have attempted to answer this question over the past decade with an inter-disciplinary research team of tree-ring scientists, anthropologists, archaeologists, ecological modelers, education and outreach specialists.

In this presentation, Dr. Swetnam will focus on findings from tree-ring studies of fire, climate and forest dynamics, along with archaeological research aimed at reconstructing human population changes over the past 400 years. Although the past is not a perfect guide for the future, the history of people, forests and fires in the Jemez Mountains provides useful insights for restoring and living within resilient forest landscapes today.

View the webinar by registering through Zoom or by joining through Facebook Live on November 14 at 12:00pm.

This webinar is part of FACNM’s fall webinar series all about different aspects of prescribed fire. Click on the flyer to learn more about all presentations in the series, including the last one on December 7! Click here to view a recording of the first webinar in the series which happened on October 11.