The Harvard Forest and the Harvard Salata Institute’s Center for the Environment are delighted to co-present the fifth annual Charles Bullard Lectures featuring Michelle Mack, Regents’ Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University, and the lead PI of the Bonanza Creek LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research Program) located in the Alaskan boreal forest.
The annual Charles Bullard Lecture series was established by the Harvard Forest in 2022 to honor and learn from renowned scholars of forest ecology and conservation. The Lectures are supported by the Charles Bullard endowment and are closely associated with Harvard’s long-running Bullard Fellowship, a distinguished scholar-in-residence program for forest research.
Lecturers offer two presentations: one lecture taking place in-person on the main Harvard campus in Cambridge, Mass., and a hybrid lecture presented both in-person and online at the Harvard Forest in Petersham.
Megafires in the Far North: From Global Impacts to Local Solutions
October 8, 2026 | 5:00 p.m. | Biological Labs Lecture Hall (1080), 16 Divinity Ave., Cambridge
Climate warming is causing wildfire activity to increase in boreal forests and arctic tundra of the Far North. Fires are burning more deeply into thick organic soils and destabilizing permafrost, releasing carbon to the atmosphere that has been stored for centuries to millennia. At a global scale, these wildfires are impacting people through production of smoke and the release of greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate warming. At a local scale, increasing wildfire activity is creating new risks and vulnerabilities for local people that depend upon these ecosystems for their wellbeing. In this talk, Dr. Mack will discuss the ecological mechanisms that drive this positive feedback between wildfire and climate warming. She will explore how ecosystems and local human communities in Alaska are responding to increasing wildfire, and how we can employ emerging ideas in forest and fire management to reduce fire activity and promote human wellbeing.
Increasing wildfire, ecological legacies, and the future of the Alaskan boreal forest
October 9, 2026 | 11:00 a.m. | Harvard Forest Fisher Museum (Petersham) and on Zoom
(description coming soon)
Both lectures are free and open to the public. Registration will open in September!
