Associate Research Scientist
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Twitter: mudfire
Yale Project on Climate Communication
Twitter: YaleClimateComm
Email: jennifer.marlon at yale (dot) edu

Education

2009      Ph.D., Geography, University of Oregon
2003      M.S., Geography, University of Oregon
1991      B.S., University at Albany, State University of New York

Interests

Wildfires, Paleoecology/Paleoclimatology, & Climate Science Communication

Background

I am an Associate Research Scientist at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies studying wildfires, climate change, and climate science communication. I am a Geographer by training; I received my Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Oregon, where I worked with the Environmental Change Research Group. My dissertation "The Geography of Fire: A Paleo Perspective" quickly snowballed into an international effort to compile charcoal datasets from around the world, which is now called the Global Palaeofire Working Group.

Currently, I am working with the PalEON project. PalEON is the "Paleo-Ecological Observatory Network" and aims to bring paleo scientists together with environmental statisticians and modelers to improve ecosystem modeling and future projections under changing climate conditions. Prior to this, I completed an NSF Earth Sciences Division (EAR) postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the Williams Lab, where I studied the response of forests and fire to climate changes and human activities. I am continuing this work now with a focus on particular regions, particularly in North America, including the Pacific Northwest and New England.

My interests in environmental and climate change are diverse, but I often address problems that benefit from a broad-scale, long-term perspective. Much of my research uses sediment records of environmental change from lakes, bogs, soils, and oceans. I am particularly interested in how climate changes have affected wildfires in the past and how information about these changes can be used to improve our understanding of current wildfires and models of future fires.

I am also actively researching the public response to human-caused climate change as part of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Previously, I was also a co-organizer for the Dissertations Initiative for the Advancement of Climate Change Research (DISCCRS).