My dissertation, “Tree Rings, Climate, and History in Mexico” was focused on developing new tree-ring chronologies in tropical Mexico, using these records to reconstruct past climate, and examining the impact of extreme climate on the environment and society. This research was supported by the NSF Paleoclimatology Program, the National Geographic Society, and a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, from the NSF Geography and Regional Science Program.

My postdoctoral research included work on the NASA-funded ‘Kalahari Transect Program’. My area of research was focused on developing new multi-century tree-ring chronologies in tropical areas of southern Africa including Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia. This network is being used to develop reconstructions of regional hydroclimatic variables such as rainfall and streamflow. Other projects that I am currently collaborating on include:

The development of millennium length, climate-sensitive tree-ring chronologies from Mexico and the southern U.S., which will help define the history of decadal-scale drought and wetness extremes over North America, and the potential association between these extremes and large scale forcing mechanisms such as ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the North American Monsoon.

A large project funded by the CALFED Ecosystems Restoration Program, to develop a predictive model to locate ancient blue oak woodlands in California and use tree-ring data from these woodlands to reconstruct precipitation and streamflow for the past 500 years.

The Ancient Cross Timbers Consortium is an ongoing University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Laboratory research effort focused on using GIS based predictive models to locate and study old growth Cross Timbers forests in Oklahoma and Texas. Results of my master's research, which involved the development of a GIS-based predictive model to locate ancient Cross Timbers forests in northern Oklahoma include the development of the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve, which is managed by The Nature Conservancy.