The Jemez Mountains: A Cultural and Natural Landscape

Tom Swetnam is Regents Professor Emeritus at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona. He grew up in northern New Mexico, where his father served as a U.S. Forest Service District Ranger for over 30 years. Tom graduated from Jemez Valley High School, then he received his undergraduate degree at the University of New Mexico (BS) and graduate degrees at the University of Arizona (MS & PhD).

 

Tom has studied land use history, forest and fire ecology in the western U.S., Mexico, South America, and Siberia, Russia. Using dendrochronology (tree rings) Tom and his colleagues have reconstructed hundreds of years of climate and fire history in Southwestern forests and giant sequoia groves of the Sierra Nevada. Tom has testified to the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions, he was appointed by the Governor of Arizona to two advisory boards, and he was appointed by the President of the United States to the first Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

 

Tom currently resides in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, where he and his wife Suzanne enjoy a busy retirement life of gardening, community volunteering, and tree-ring dating of historic buildings, archaeological timbers, and fire scars.