Conservation Lecture Series: The Changing Nature of Fire and its Impacts on California Birds
Fire is both a widespread natural disturbance that affects the distribution and abundance of species and a tool that can be used to manage habitats for species. Knowledge of temporal changes in the occurrence of species after fire is essential for conservation management in fire-prone environments. Despite the evolutionary importance of fire in California, we are entering an unprecedented period where the dominant nature of fire is rapidly changing, disrupting both human and animal lives. In this lecture, Morgan Tingley will discuss the myriad ways that fire shapes the ecology of birds in California and what we know and don’t know about what our flammable future may hold. Morgan Tingley joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2020, after previously serving as an Assistant Professor at the University of Connecticut and as a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellow at Princeton University. He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an elected fellow of the American Ornithological Society and a research associate with the Institute for Bird Populations.