Conservation Science at The Nature Conservancy - Ayn Shlisky, Ph.D., Landscape Ecologist

People

Ayn Shlisky, Ph.D.
Landscape Ecologist, Director of the Global Fire Initiative

Contact Information
The Nature Conservancy Global Fire Initiative
2424 Spruce St.
Boulder, CO 80302

Phone: (720) 974-7063
Cell: (720) 231-9542
E-mail: ashlisky@tnc.org

Brief Biography
Ayn Shlisky is Director of The Nature Conservancy's Global Fire Initiative. She leads a team of 23 scientists, government relations specialists and fire practitioners working to help governments, organizations and communities find lasting solutions to the challenges posed by altered fire dynamics. The Global Fire Initiative implements scientific fire assessments, develops fire-related threat abatement strategies, assures adequate resources and training are available to implement critical strategies, and lobbies governments for policy reform and fire-related appropriations.

Ayn works with national and multi-lateral partners - such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization – to enable national and multinational policies to allow fire to play a natural role in ecosystems, while addressing the needs of people and communities. She also collaborates with policy-makers, scientists, and practitioners from within and outside the Conservancy to assess fire regime conditions, sources of fire-related threats and key cross-cutting strategies for threat abatement at ecoregional levels worldwide (e.g., TNC-IUCN-UC Berkeley-WWF Global Fire Partnership). She serves on the steering committee and faculty for Applied Fire Effects (RX510), an upper-level course taught each year at the interagency National Advanced Fire and Resource Institute.

Prior to her current position, Ayn created and led the Conservancy's role in the LANDFIRE (www.landfire.gov) project, a collaborative 5-year, $40 million project with the USFS and DOI aimed at developing geospatial data and models for fire regime restoration, fire management, biodiversity conservation, and hazardous fuels reduction nation-wide. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, Ayn worked for the USDA Forest Service for 12 years as Ecologist on the multi-agency Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, Associate Area Ecologist in the USFS Pacific Northwest Region, and as a Forester and Ecologist in various capacities with the USFS in California.

Education
Ph. D. Ecosystem Science 2001, University of California, Berkeley
M. S. Range Management 1989, University of California, Berkeley
B. S. Forest Management 1985, University of California, Berkeley

Selected Publications

Shlisky, A., J. Waugh, P. Gonzalez, M. Gonzalez, M. Manta, H. Santoso, E. Alvarado, A. Ainuddin Nuruddin, D.A. Rodríguez-Trejo, R. Swaty, D. Schmidt, M. Kaufmann, R. Myers, A. Alencar, F. Kearns, D. Johnson, J. Smith, D. Zollner and W. Fulks. 2007. Fire, Ecosystems and People: Threats and Strategies for Global Biodiversity Conservation. Global Fire Initative Technical Report 2007-2. The Nature Conservancy. Arlington, VA.

Blankenship, K., A. Shlisky, W. Fulks, E. Contreras, D. Johnson, J. Patton, J. Smith and R. Swaty. 2007. An Ecological Assessment of Fire and Biodiversity Conservation Across the Lower 48 States of the U.S. Global Fire Initiative Technical Report 2007-1. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA.

Battles, John J., Randall D. Jackson, Ayn Shlisky, Barbara Allen-Diaz, and James W. Bartolome. In press. Net primary production and biomass distribution in the blue oak savanna. USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region General Technical Report. PSW-GTR-19x.

Baker, B. B., Bachelet, D., Daly, C., Ma, J., Moseley, R. K., Shi, X. Z., Sun, J. H., and Shlisky, A., 2006: Effects of climate change and land management practices in the Hengduan Mountains of northwestern Yunnan, PRC: options for alpine conservation. In Price, M. (ed.), Global Change in Mountain Regions. Dumfrieshire, Sapiens Publishing, 272-273.

Shlisky, A. J., Guyette, R.P, and Ryan, K.C. 2005. Modeling reference conditions to restore altered fire regimes in oak-hickory-pine forests: validating coarse models with local fire history data. EastFire Conference Proceedings. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA. May 12-13, 2005.

Kaufmann, M., Shlisky, A., and Marchand, P. 2005. Good Fire, Bad Fire: How to think about forestland management and ecological processes in today’s social and economic environment. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station Publication, Ft Collins, CO.

Shlisky, A.J. and Hann, W. J. 2004. Regime change. Wildfire Vol 13(2): 24-30.

Shlisky, A.J., Pohl, K.A., Kaufmann, M.R., Hann, W.J. 2004. Modeling reference conditions to restore altered fire regimes. 89th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. August 1-6, 2004. Portland, OR.

Shlisky, A., Zollner, D., Kaufmann, M., Zimmerman, T., Sorensen, W., Wiebe, L., Motanic, D., Lewis, P., Carter, A. Halberg, D., Runnels, B. 2003. A collaborative, multi-scale approach to abating the threats of altered fire regimes across the United States. Proceedings 3rd International Fire Conference, Sydney, Australia, October 3-6, 2003.

Shlisky, A., Zollner, D., Andre, J., and Simon, S. 2003. Application of the fire regime condition class process to collaborative multi-scale land management planning in the Boston Mountains, Arkansas. Proceedings of 2nd International Wildland Fire Ecology and Fire Management Congress, November 16-20, 2003, Coronado Springs Resort, Orlando, Florida.

Rollins, M.G., Keane, R.E., Zhu, Z., Menakis, J., Hann, W.J., and Shlisky, A. J. 2003. LANDFIRE: A nationally consistent and locally relevant interagency fire, fuels, and risk assessment. Proceedings of 2nd International Wildland Fire Ecology and Fire Management Congress, November 16-20, 2003, Coronado Springs Resort, Orlando, Florida.

Hardesty, J., Brunson, E., Menakis, J., Pohl, K., Shlisky, A., Zollner, D. 2004. Western Public Lands Strategy: A west-wide assessment of altered fire regimes and recommended conservation actions. January 27, 2003. The Nature Conservancy, Boulder, CO.

Shlisky, A.J. and B. Allen-Diaz. 2001. Validation of a conceptual hierarchical model in an oak woodland/annual grassland. Proceedings of the 86th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America. August 5-10, 2001.

Battles, J. J., A. J. Shlisky, R. H. Barrett, R. C. Heald, and B. H. Allen-Diaz. 2001. The effects of forest management on plant species diversity in a Sierran conifer forest. Forest Ecology and Management 146: 213-224.

Shlisky, A. 1996. Early successional plant communities, Pacific silver fir zone. PNW, Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station publication. 179 p.

Shlisky, A. J. 1994. Multi-scale ecosystem analysis and design in the Pacific Northwest Region: The Umatilla National Forest Restoration Project. In: Jensen, M. E. and P. S. Bourgeron (tech. Eds.). 1994. Volume II: Ecosystem management principles and applications. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-318. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 376 p

Shlisky, A. J. 1994. Multiscale analysis of the Pacific Northwest. Journal of Forestry 92(8): 32-34.

Allen, B. H., R. R. Evett, B. A. Holzman, and A. J. Martin (Shlisky). 1989. Rangeland cover type descriptions for California hardwood rangelands. Forest and Rangeland Resources Assessment Program, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. 318 p.

Hall, F. C., L. Bryant, R. Clausnitzer, K. Geier-Hayes, R. Keane, J. Kertis, A. Shlisky, and R. Steele. 1995. Definitions and codes for seral status and structure of vegetation. General Technical Report PNW-GTR-363, Portland, OR. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station 39 pp.

Shlisky, A. J. 2000. The Hawaiian Island environment. Rangelands. 22(5): 17-20.

Professional Associations/Memberships
Ecological Society of America
Society for Conservation Biology
International Association of Wildland Fire
International Association of Landscape Ecologists
Advisory Team, Interagency Fire Research and Management Exchange System