Graduate Student

rkelly@life.illinois.edu

I am a Ph. D. student in the Department of Plant Biology. I am interested seeking quantitative solutions to broad-scale ecological questions. My current project examines spatiotemporal variability in the fire regime of northern boreal forests. Our lab is currently processing ~30 sediment cores taken from the Yukon Flats and Copper River Basin ecoregions. The cores span approximately 2000 years or more into the past, and contain macroscopic charcoal particles which can be used to reconstruct fire history. I will compare fire records within and between the regions, and also relate them to inferred vegetation and climate data. The relationships elucidated will be then be compared to simulated data generated by the landscape model ALFRESCO. The direct observational data available to paramterize this model date back only to ca. 1950, and paleorecords spanning longer time scales and a greater range of variability should help to better inform ALFRESCO's predictive capabilities. Ultimately, I intend to model the boreal carbon budget calibrated to the past two millenia and driven by predictions of future climate scenarios.