Thomas W. Swetnam

Thomas W. Swetnam (born 1955) is Regents' Professor Emeritus of Dendrochronology at the University of Arizona, studying disturbances of forest ecosystems across temporal and spatial scales. He served as the Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research from 2000 to 2015.

Education

Swetnam received his bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from the University of New Mexico and subsequently received his master's and PhD from the University of Arizona in watershed management and dendrochronology.

Recognition

He received the A.E. Douglass award from the University of Arizona, the W.S. Cooper award from the Ecological Society of America (with Julio Betancourt) and the Henry Cowles award from the American Association of Geographers (with James H. Speer). He was elected a Fellow of the American Association For the Advancement of Science in 2015. He received the Harold C. Fritts Lifetime Achievement Award from the Tree-Ring Society in 2016. He received the Harold Biswell Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Fire Ecology in 2016.

Advisor

He has served on the following advisory and editorial boards:

2000-2004 Board of trustees, Valles Caldera National Preserve 2003-2006 Arizona Forest Health Advisory Council 2005-2006 Arizona Climate Change Advisory Group 1993–present associate editor, International Journal of Wildland Fire 2000-2001 editor, Tree-Ring Research 1994-1998 associate editor, Ecoscience 1998 associate editor, Canadian Journal of Forest Research 1998-1999 editorial board, Ecological Applications 2005–2012 associate editor, Dendrochronlogia 2016–2019 board of trustees, The Nature Conservancy, New Mexico

Research

He has authored and co-authored more than 120 scientific papers in journals and symposium proceedings, including the following frequently cited/significant papers:

Swetnam, T. W. and C. H. Baisan, 1996. Historical fire regime patterns in the Southwestern United States since AD 1700. In C. Allen, editor, Fire effects in Southwestern Forests, Proceedings of the Second La Mesa Fire Symposium, Los Alamos, New Mexico, March 29–31, 1994. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-GTR-286:11-32.

Edited books

Dean, J. S., D. M. Meko, and T. W. Swetnam, eds., 1996. Tree Rings, Environment, and Humanity, Proceedings of the International Conference, Tucson, Arizona, 17–21 May 1994. Radiocarbon, Tucson Arizona. 889 pp.