Lara Kueppers

Dr. Lara Kueppers is a climate and ecosystem scientist who studies ecological responses and feedbacks to climate change. She uses field experiments and observations, as well as computational models. to understand climate-ecosystem interactions in the Western US. and tropics. Professor Kueppers teaches courses on nature-based climate solutions and quantitative approaches to understanding environmental problems. She is a founding board member of the Climate and Wildfire Institute, and holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and MS and BS degrees in Earth systems science from Stanford University.

For this project, Lara is focused on improving predictions of post-wildfire forest recovery in a warmer, high CO2 world, and considering management interventions that promote or hinder climate-adapted forest transitions. Initial modeling and field work will focus in Gunnison County, Colorado and a range of sites in California, but expand to address the U.S. west-wide domain of the project.