Chris Baisan

Christopher Baisan, Senior Research Specialist, has worked at the LTRR since 1986, first as a Student Assistant and Research Technician, and subsequently as a Research Specialist. He received a Bachelors of Science degree in Renewable Natural Resources from the University of Arizona in 1991, with honors (Summa Cum Laude). He also has received other academic honors, including Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Graduating Senior, 1991; Outstanding Senior in Watershed Sciences 1991 (Presented 1992); A.E. Douglass Scholarship 1988; E.S. Schulman Scholarship 1989; and the Dougherty Scholarship 1988-1991. Following completion of a dendrochronological fire history study for the National Park Service in Saguaro National Park which resulted in several published papers, he has participated in numerous funded projects at the LTRR. These projects have included a ten-year effort to reconstruct fire in the Sierra Nevada forests funded by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Global Change Program and numerous contracts with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service to develop dendrochronology-based fire histories. Recent field efforts have included expansion of fire history reconstructions into new geographic areas and the utilization of new, multi-proxy reconstruction techniques. His field collection efforts have resulted in the development, over the past seventeen years, of a new network of millennial-length tree-ring chronologies that are being used in climate reconstructions and as archaeological dating controls. Most recently this has resulted in the development of a new 2,300 year long tree-ring chronology in central Utah. He has developed, in collaboration with other Laboratory scientists, techniques to extract more refined seasonal reconstructions of environmental variables and co-authored a proposal to reconstruct multi-proxy estimates of past climate in central Utah. Additional duties and accomplishments include designing projects and developing work plans, running field operations, supervising students and staff, teaching the basic and advanced skills of dendrochronology to numerous visiting scholars and students, teaching the laboratory portion of the Introduction to Dendrochronology course and developing a new course program and teaching protocol for the laboratory section.