Tom Swetnam is PEEC’s Earth Week speaker this year. He will give a talk on Ancestral Puebloan Fire Practices April 17. Courtesy photoPEEC News:
How did Ancestral Pueblo populations manage to live within our forests, with no known history of catastrophic fires destroying their villages? What can we learn from history to improve our own relationships with fires in our forests?
This year PEEC is thrilled to bring Dr. Tom Swetnam to the Los Alamos Nature Center as the featured speaker for our annual Earth Day events. As a part of our Earth Week programming, he will give a presentation Tuesday, April 17, at the Nature Center about how Ancestral Puebloans lived with fire. His talk will begin at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the general public.
Puebloan people lived within our fire-prone landscapes at relatively high population densities for centuries in what was essentially a sustainable system. Swetnam and his inter-disciplinary research team have attempted to discover how this was possible, and what we can learn from history to improve our relationship with fire and our forests.
During this special presentation, Swetnam will focus on results from research aimed at reconstructing climate, fire, and human population changes over the past 400 years. Swetnam will also reveal lessons from the past that give insights for restoring and living within resilient forest landscapes today.
PEEC is excited to welcome Swetnam to the nature center and to share his research on a topic that is so important to Los Alamos and the surrounding community. Please join us for his presentation and our other Earth Week events.
For more information about this and other PEEC programs, visit www.peecnature.org, email programs@peecnature.org or call (505).662.0460.
