Meet the speaker for SAFE Connections:
Fire ecology at tonto national forest
Join us on November 12th from 2-3pm PST to learn more about being a Fire Ecologist for a U.S. National Forest. Our speaker Dr. Mary Lata is an accomplished fire science professional with advice to share with students on beginning a government career in fire ecology.
A native Iowan, Dr. Lata’s fire career started in 1993 with three seasons of restoration work with The Nature Conservancy focused mostly on grassland restoration. She then worked as an Interpretive Ranger at Badlands National Park, where she got her first taste of wildfire. As a Fire Effects Monitor out of Bandelier National Monument (New Mexico), she took an assignment on a Wildfire Use Fire – where she became completely addicted to the study of wildland fire.
She completed her PhD research at the University of Iowa on a full-ride fellowship, with a focus on the thermal dynamics of grassfire, and how soil moisture affects fire behavior and effects. In 2002, she began working full-time as a Fire Ecologist for the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands where she managed the fuels, watershed, BAER, and botany programs.
In 2010, with an eye to the restoration of fire regimes on a landscape scale, she moved to Flagstaff, and for eight years was the fire ecologist on the core team for the Four Forest Restoration Initiative. Desiring to get to get back on the ground and be consistently engaged with the field, in May 2018 she accepted a job as the fire ecologist for the Tonto National Forest in Arizona. She has become heavily engaged in sorting out the ecological future of the Sonoran Desert as introduced grasses have resulted in a changed fire regime that has been changing the Sonoran Desert into a novel desert-grassland. For each of the last 11 years, she has tested various species for their response to smoke to look for patterns of fire effects in areas that haven’t burned. Her current job includes public speaking, teaching, monitoring and evaluating fire effects, landscape planning and analysis and her favorite part, working on wildland fires.
