Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Franco Biondi
CIRES Visiting Fellow
2012-2013

Sabbatical
Laurea (Italian Doctorate), Università di Firenze
Ph.D., University of Arizona

Project: Using tree-ring records to quantify spatial and temporal patterns of dry and wet episodes

Franco Biondi is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he is also the DendroLab Director. His main areas of research include ecoclimatology (which studies the relationship between living organisms and their climatic environment); forest and landscape dynamics; spatial processes; and environmental change.

While at CIRES, he will work with Balaji Rajagopalan and Tom Chase, along with Roger Pielke Sr.’s research group and Jeff Lukas at the Western Water Assessment (WWA). He is investigating how to best combine proxy records of climate at annual to seasonal timespans with instrumental observations and models used to manage environmental resources, especially water. Additionally, he is studying how to incorporate long-term perspectives in the analysis (and management) of disturbance effects on tree-dominated ecosystems. “Proxy records, such as tree-ring chronologies, can help improve regional assessments of environmental (and societal) vulnerability to future environmental changes,” he says.

Biondi is enthusiastic about the highly interdisciplinary nature of CIRES, which
promotes exciting research, he says. “Dating tree rings is wood-hard,” he jokes. While in Boulder, he plans to play soccer, as well as hike, ski, and raft.

Sponsor: Thomas Chase