Philip Higuera

Philip Higuera is a professor in the Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences at the University of Montana, where he leads the PaleoEcology and Fire Ecology Lab. As an expert on forestry, wildfires, fire ecology and climate change, he can provide insight on how wildfires have grown in strength with climate change and how forest ecosystems are adapting.

At the PaleoEcology and Fire Ecology Lab, Higuera studies forests across western North America and researches how fire activity has responded to climate change, both in our recent past and throughout history. His work also examines how forest ecosystems have reacted in turn to these drastic changes. In 2018, he was named as a “highly cited scientist” by Clarivate Analytics for papers published over the last decade.

Higuera has a Ph.D. in forest ecology from the University of Washington in Seattle, a master’s in forest ecology from University of Washington, Seattle, and a bachelor’s of science in biology, environmental studies and geology from Middlebury College.

His work focuses largely on the Rocky Mountains but extends as far as Alaska.