January 2007, finding this
fantastic snag that contains about 10 very old fire scars. Any guesses
where this might be? New Mexico? Arizona? Oregon? Montana?
Scroll down to the bottom to find out...
Henri D.
Grissino-Mayer
Department of Geography
417 Burchfiel Geography Building
The University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0925 U.S.A.
865 974-6029 (office)
865 974-6025 (fax)
PERSONAL STUFF
Place/date of
birth: Monterey, California, December
24, 1954 Home Address: Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S.A. Hobbies: Hiking and backpacking, camping, collecting old and rare
books, trees, rescuing cats
Family: Just me and my five cats:
Shadow II, a formerly feral kitten I adopted February 20, 2004 from
the Rocky Mount Historic Site ("cabin kitty"), and who is the
love of my life;
Ollie, a previously abandoned kitty
who I adopted on July 14, 2006, and who literally is the world's most
well-behaved kitty (he sleeps with me very night); Mr. Tigglesworth
("Tigger"), who joined us on November 3, 2006, when I found him crying
after being dumped on my street in the bitter cold;
Mollie, who joined us on February 28,
2008, after I rescued her from an apartment where she had been abandoned
for a week without food and water by drug dealers; and
Mr. Butch (March 13, 2008),
who was once an old, beat up feral cat near death when I got him medical
attention, and is now a loving house cat and Ollie's best friend.
On February 26, 2003, my
beloved Shadow died from
liver failure. She had been part of our family for 8 wonderful years,
dating all the way back to my days in Tucson,
and she is terribly missed by her family. She will always be my "black
panther" - she was "so pretty" and loved nothing more than to roll in
the dirt. For eight years, she slept curled under my right arm.
On December 22, 2005, my
beloved Oliverdied
from cancer. He had been with me for 11 and a half years dating back to
my days in Tucson when I lived at North 1st Avenue, and saw me
through my most difficult periods. He was literally the world's most perfect cat. He
was "furocious" and loved more than anything else to play stick and
cuddle with me under the blankets at night.
On February 19, 2007, I
lost a wonderful kitty who had kept me company for over five years. I
adopted
Sir Pursalot (an Orangus tabicus var. grandis) on
January 12, 2002. He was a real 18 pounder, and will forever be my "big
male orange tabby." I'll never forget how he loved to crawl up my chest
every morning while I sat on the sofa, and would look at me with his one
good eye (he had brain damage from being abused by former owners).
All eight of these cats, and
many more for whom I've found adoptive homes, were rescues,
abandoned cats who were tossed aside by humans, no longer wanted. I've
fostered almost 20 homeless cats, had all spayed or neutered, and had
all necessary shots and vaccinations administered to these wonderful
loving creatures. To learn more about
rescue cats and kittens, check out
RescueCats, Inc.
TEACHING INTERESTS
After eight long years as an Assistant Professor, I was finally promoted
to Associate Professor with tenure in August 2005 at the University of
Tennessee in Knoxville. My expertise focuses on and dendrochronology,
paleoclimatology, and fire ecology, but I also have a fair background in
quantitative methods, biogeography, geomorphology, natural and human
hazards, soil science and soil geography, and geographic thought. I
strongly believe that the primary purpose of a university is to educate,
and that through research we become better educators. I also believe in
the use of new technologies in the classroom, and I am a strong advocate
of the use of the Internet and worldwide web to enhance the learning
experience.
TEACHING PHILOSOPHIES
I believe in
collaborative learning that provides ample opportunity for students to
become involved in the educational and research processes.
I believe that the
educational experience should be an enjoyable one.
I do not believe in
standing in front of a class for one hour and regurgitating material
from a textbook.
I do not believe in
complete isolation during education.
I believe in a
reasonable student/teacher ratio to ensure individual attention is given
to all students.
I believe a student
should receive the highest quality education in an environment that best
suits the student and not the administration.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
I
remember when I saw my first tree ring - I was a young laddie of but
two, and my papa took me to the arboretum. When I saw my first signature
pattern, I said "Papa, when I grow up, I want to study forensics and
carve up dead bodies." But my wise papa said, "Become a
dendrochronologist instead..." My background as a climatologist
introduced me to tree-ring research way back in 1985, and I have several
publications out or in press. My own research concentrates on several
areas, listed below. I've been fortunate that my research has been
featured in thousands of newspapers worldwide and my students and I have
been featured in several television documentaries. Be sure to check out
these online published news articles which describe my research!
First, I use tree rings to reconstruct past climates, accomplished by
developing site master tree-ring chronologies, then calibrating recent
tree-ring widths with historic climate records. I've concentrated mainly
in the southwestern United States, but began my career by reconstructing
climate in northeastern Georgia under the direction of Dave Butler.
A few years
ago, I developed a 2,129 year long reconstruction of rainfall for
northwestern New Mexico. This reconstruction was based on a master
chronology developed from some extremely old living trees and remnant
wood found in El Malpais National Monument, just south of Grants, New
Mexico. The graph above shows a 100-year spline (much like a moving
average) fit to the reconstruction to accentuate the century-scale
trends in past rainfall. Note, however, that the graph above does not
depict decadal scale trends very well...
The graph
above, however, was designed to depict shorter-term, decadal-scale
trends by using a 25-year spline. Notice that droughts and wet periods
that last many years are now shown, such as the drought of the 1950s,
which was one of the worst in the last 2,100 years.
MY RESEARCH ON FIRE
HISTORY
Second, I use tree rings to reconstruct past fire regimes by analyzing
the fire-scar record contained in many ponderosa pine trees. I was
initially involved in fire history research as part of Tom Swetnam's
Fire History and Ecology Workgroup at the University of Arizona since
about 1989 when I collected my first fire-scarred specimens up on Mt.
Graham in the Pinaleño Mountains of southeastern Arizona. A good portion
of my dissertation research involved developing chronologies of past
fire for several sites at El Malpais National Monument. I found that
temporal changes in past fires were linked to global-scale changes in
atmospheric circulations patterns that resulted in shifts in the summer
monsoon component of Southwestern precipitation. Human-related factors,
such as grazing and fire suppression, also had significant impacts on
fire regimes, especially ca. 1870-1900.
THE DENDROCHRONOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATABASE
Since 1986, I've been collecting references about dendrochronology. I
now have nearly 11,000 of these in a
computerized bibliographic database that is
now searchable via the worldwide web. The database is alphabetically
arranged by author, and contains the year of publication, title, source
(journal, book, proceedings, etc.), and language information, and also
lists keywords that include site information and species used. I have
about 8,000 of these in my actual possession, and the collection has
been used by researchers from all over the world. I have many rare
references as well. If you'd like more information, or you have
references you'd like to add, please contact me at my e-mail address
below. Also, please send me any reprints of articles related to
tree-ring research that you publish so that I may enter these into the
database!
SOFTWARE FOR
DENDROCHRONOLOGY
On the side, I also enjoy programming to make all our lives a little
easier. I became involved with the
International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) in
1988 through Hal Fritts, with whom I continue to work.
Since 1991, I've headed the development of the ITRDB Program Library,
which has been distributed to over 100 institutes around the world. I've
also written
FHX2, software for the analysis of fire
history from tree-ring data. This software allows researchers to easily
enter fire history data, analyze it statistically, graph it, and even
plot it. This software has also been distributed widely, and is in use
by the USDA Forest Service, the National Park Service, the National
Biological Survey, over 50 academic institutions, and in many countries
around the world.
Answer: Where did we
find such spectacular multiple-scarred pine trees? Right here in Great
Smoky Mountains National Park in eastern Tennessee. Our initial recon
and collection trips on the western portion of the park have provided
over 100 such multiple scarred trees in the first three sites we've
selected for sampling.
