Biography
I obtained my undergraduate degree in Biology from Queen's University
in 1990 (B.Sc.(Hon)). After a few years of cycle touring, working and
travelling through southeast Asia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand I
returned to western Canada and completed a masters degree in Environmental
Design (Environmental Science) at the University of Calgary in 1997. During
my masters, I worked with fire and vegetation managers in Kootenay and
Banff National Park with the goal of extending our knowledge of fire history
and vegetation dynamics for montane spruce forests over millennial timescales.
This information helps managers set realistic targets or goals for restoring
fire as a dominant ecological process in protected landscapes. My interests
in disturbance ecology and paleoecology inspired me to pursue a Ph.D.
(2002) in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University
(SFU), where I worked with a multidisciplinary team that included Dr.
Rolf Mathewes (Biology), Dr. Ken Lertzman (School of Resource and Environmental
Management) and Dr. Dana Lepofsky (Archaeology). Our goal was to learn
more about fire frequency in high-elevation mountain hemlock rainforest
and investigate what influence humans or lightning-lit fires may have
had in the past. During my Ph.D., I spent many days cycling up and down
the winding trails around SFU thinking about the role of fire in coastal
temperate rainforest. I was awarded an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship in
2002 to continue my research in Dr. R. Scott Anderson’s paleoecology
lab at Northern Arizona University (NAU). Here I analysed long-term fire
history records from forests in the Sierra Nevada of California, Alaska,
Colorado and New Mexico. I started a joint position in the Geography Department
and School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s in the summer of
2005.
Teaching Interests
I currently teach undergraduate courses in earth system science (GPHY
102), honours seminar in earth system science - biogeography of fire (GPHY
494), special topics in environmental science - environmental restoration
(ENSC 480) and a projects course in environmental sustainability (ENSC
410). My teaching interests are linked to global climate change issues
with an emphasis on disturbance ecology and the human-environment interface
of wildland fire. As a biogeographer, I try to explore important environmental
issues with new methods in temporal and spatial analysis derived from
the rich fields of paleoecology, landscape ecology and ecosystem science.
Topics of potential interest to graduate students include paleoecology,
fire ecology, biogeography, ecological restoration and climate change.
Research
My research interests include paleoecology, fire ecology, vegetation
dynamics, biogeography, ecological restoration, forest sustainability,
fire regime shifts linked to climate and the impacts of long-term drought
in North America. Future changes in climate, and recent large destructive
fires in western North America, highlight the need to increase our understanding
of interactions between climate and fire frequency. Several colleagues
and I are trying to reconstruct fire histories across many forest types
in the western Americas using multi-proxy paleoecological records such
as charcoal from lake sediments and soil, pollen, plant macrofossils and
tree rings. In order to know whether human-induced climate changes will
alter fire regimes, we must first understand how natural variability influences
fire history in forest ecosystems. This knowledge will improve our ability
to forecast future risks related to forest sustainability and the global
carbon budget. This information is also critical to the development of
global-scale general circulation models, which depend on high-resolution
fire history data to validate historical interactions between climate
and fire, and to predict forest ecosystem trajectories under various global
change scenarios.
Current Research Projects:
• Holocene fire history, vegetation and climate change in British
Columbia, Alberta and the Kenai lowlands of Alaska
• Holocene fire history of subalpine and montane forests in the
Sierra Nevada of California
• Holocene fire history and ecological restoration project for forests
near St. Lawrence Islands National Park, eastern Ontario.
My related work in tephrochronology seeks to refine the timing and extent
of Cascade volcanic ash deposits across western and northern Canada. Geologists,
geographers, archaeologists and biologists use these widespread chronological
markers to date various sedimentary deposits and better document the timing
of past environmental change.
Publications
Power, M.J., Ortiz, N., Marlon, J., Bartlein, P.J., Harrison, S.P., Mayle,
F., Ballouche, A., Bradshaw, R., Carcaillet, C., Cordova, C., Mooney,
S., Moreno, P., Prentice, I.C., Thonicke, K., Tinner, W., Whitlock, C.,
Zhang, Y., Zhao, Y., Anderson, R.S., Beer, R., Behling, H., Briles, C.,
Brown, K., Brunelle A, Bush, M., Clark, J., Colombaroli, D., Daniels,
M., Dodson, J., Edwards, M.E., Fisinger, W., Gavin, D.G., Gobet, E., Hallett,
D.J., Higuera, P., Horn, S., Inoue, J., Kaltenreider, P., Kennedy, L.,
Kong, Z.C., Long, C., Lynch, J., Lynch, B., McGlone, M., Meeks, S., Meyer,
G., Minckley, T., Mohr, J, Noti, R., Pierce, J., Richard, P., Shuman,
B.J., Takahara, H., Toney, J., Turney, C.., Umbanhower, C., Vandergoes,
M., Vanniere, B., Walsh, M., Wang, X., Williams, N., Wilmshurst, J., Zhang
, J.H. (2008) Changes in fire activity since the LGM: an assessment based
on a global synthesis and analysis of charcoal data. Climate Dynamics
30: 887–907.
Gavin, D.G., Hallett, D.J., Hu, F.S., Lertzman, K.P., Prichard, S.J.,
Brown, K.J., Lynch, J.A., Bartlein, P.J., and Peterson, D.L. (2007). Forest
fire and climate change in western North America: Insights from sediment
charcoal records. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5, 499-506.
Anderson, R.S., Hallett, D.J., Jass, R.B., Berg, E., Toney, J.L., de
Fontaine, C.S. and Devolder, A. (2006) Holocene development of boreal
forests and fire regimes on the Kenai lowlands of Alaska. The Holocene
16(6): 791-803.
Hallett, D.J. and Hills, L.V. (2006) Holocene vegetation dynamics, fire
history, lake level and climate change in the Kootenay Valley, southeastern
British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Paleolimnology 35: 351-371.
Lepofsky, D.S., Lertzman, K.P., Hallett, D.J. and Mathewes, R.W. (2005)
Climate Change and Culture Change on the Southern Coast of British Columbia
2400-1200 B.P. An Hypothesis. American Antiquity 70(2): 267-293.
Lepofsky, D.S., Hallett, D.J., Washbrook, K., McHalsie, S., Lertzman,
K. and Mathewes, R.W. (2005) Documenting precontact plant management on
the Northwest Coast: An example of prescribed burning in the central and
upper Fraser Valley, British Columbia. Edited by Douglas Deur and Nancy
J. Turner, In Keeping it Living: Traditional Plant Tending and Cultivation
on the Northwest Coast. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Rosenberg, S.M., Walker, I.R., Mathewes, R.W. and Hallett, D.J. (2004)
Midge-inferred Holocene climate history of two subalpine lakes in southern
British Columbia. The Holocene 14(2): 258-271.
Hallett, D.J., Mathewes, R.W. and Walker, R.C. (2003) A 1000-year record
of forest fire, drought and lake level change in southeastern British
Columbia. The Holocene 13(5): 751-761.
Hallett, D.J., Lepofsky, D.S., Mathewes, R.W., and Lertzman, K.P. (2003)
11,000 years of fire history and climate in the mountain hemlock rainforests
of southwestern British Columbia based on sedimentary charcoal. Canadian
Journal of Forest Research 33: 292-312.
Lertzman, K., Gavin, D., Hallett, D., Brubaker, L., Lepofsky, D. and
Mathewes, R. (2002) Long-term fire regime estimated from soil charcoal
in coastal temperate rainforests. Conservation Ecology 6(2):
5. [online] URL: http://www.consecol.org/vol6/iss2/art5
Hallett, D.J., Mathewes, R.W. and Foit, F.F., Jr. (2001) Mid-Holocene
Glacier Peak and Mount St. Helens We tephra layers detected in lake sediments
from southern British Columbia using high-resolution techniques. Quaternary
Research 55: 284-292.
Hallett, D.J. and Walker, R.C. (2000) Paleoecology and its application
to fire and vegetation management in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia.
Journal of Paleolimnology 24(4): 401-414.
Hallett, D.J., Hills, L.V. and Clague, J.J. (1997) New accelerator mass
spectrometry radiocarbon ages for the Mazama tephra layer from Kootenay
National Park, British Columbia, Canada. Canadian Journal of Earth
Sciences 34: 1202-1209.
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Dr.
Douglas J. Hallett
Biography