139 Fire History and Environmental Disturbance Reconstruction for Fish Lake, UT

Faculty Mentor: Andrea Brunelle (Geography, University of Utah)

I am currently working in the Records of Environment and Disturbance (RED) Lab under mentorship of Dr. Andrea Brunelle. I study paleoclimatology by using proxy data, specifically charcoal and pollen from soil cores to aid me in reconstructing the past environment of Fish Lake located in south-central Utah. To determine the age of the core AMS radiocarbon dating was performed to build an age model. Based on the age model, fire history will be reconstructed through sequential charcoal sampling. Over the past 40 years, the size and duration of wildfires in the western United States have significantly increased (Dennison et al. 2014). Understanding how fire frequency and intensity changes over time is important to those living in the western U.S. Additionally, I will be analyzing 2-3 pollen samples from a particular section of the core and analyzing the paleoecology of Fish Lake at a given point in time to specifically examine the ecological response to a fire.