Glen MacDonald

About

Glen MacDonald is a distinguished professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA. His research focuses on issues of climate change and ecological and societal responses. His lab employs a variety of research tools, including biological, elemental geochemical, and isotopic analysis of lake and wetland sediments, tree-ring analysis, satellite remote sensing, and modeling to develop long-term records of climatic and environmental change and large spatial records of such changes. His studies have included treelines and climate change, drought and its impacts, vegetation and fire, dynamics and carbon stores of wetlands, and sea-level rise and coastal marshes. Field sites for his research have included locations in Canada, the western USA, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, Syria, and India, often involving international teams of academic, government, and NGO researchers.

Research topics

• Geography
• Ecology
• Oceanography
• Physical geography
• Geology
• Environmental science
• Climatology

Selected publications

• Large stocks of peatland carbon and nitrogen are vulnerable to permafrost thaw

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 768 citations

  -C losses reverse after ∼200 y, as warming strengthens peatland C-sinks. We project substantial, but highly uncertain, additional losses of peat into fluvial systems of 10 to 30 Pg C and 0.4 to 0.9 Pg N. The combined gaseous and fluvial peatland C loss estimated here adds 30 to 50% onto previous estimates of permafrost-thaw C losses, with southern permafrost regions being the most vulnerable.

  DOI

• The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2022 · 77 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Southern California is a biodiversity hotspot and home to over 23 million people. Over recent decades the annual wildfire area in the coastal southern California region has not significantly changed. Yet how fire regime will respond to future anthropogenic climate change remains an important question. Here, we estimate wildfire probability in southern California at station scale and daily resolution using random forest algorithms and downscaled earth system model simulations. We project…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Localized Scenarios and Latitudinal Patterns of Vertical and Lateral Resilience of Tidal Marshes to Sea‐Level Rise in the Contiguous United States

  Earth s Future · 2021 · 49 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Coastal wetlands have two dimensions of vulnerability to sea‐level rise (SLR), a vertical one, in cases where SLR outpaces their capacity to vertically accrete, and a lateral one, in cases where they are restricted from migrating inland by topography and land use. We conducted a meta‐analysis of accretion rates, standardized our analysis by using only 137 Cs based estimates, and used model intercomparison to generate a vertical resilience index, a function of local SLR, tidal range, and…

  DOI

• Pre–Younger Dryas megafaunal extirpation at Rancho La Brea linked to fire-driven state shift

  Science · 2023-08-18 · 45 citations

  article

  The cause, or causes, of the Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions have been difficult to establish, in part because poor spatiotemporal resolution in the fossil record hinders alignment of species disappearances with archeological and environmental data. We obtained 172 new radiocarbon dates on megafauna from Rancho La Brea in California spanning 15.6 to 10.0 thousand calendar years before present (ka). Seven species of extinct megafauna disappeared by 12.9 ka, before the onset of the Younger Drya…

  PublisherDOI

• Drivers of California’s changing wildfires: a state-of-the-knowledge synthesis

  International Journal of Wildland Fire · 2023-05-22 · 44 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Over the past four decades, annual area burned has increased significantly in California and across the western USA. This trend reflects a confluence of intersecting factors that affect wildfire regimes. It is correlated with increasing temperatures and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit. Anthropogenic climate change is the driver behind much of this change, in addition to influencing other climate-related factors, such as compression of the winter wet season. These climatic trends and associat…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Identifying Hydroclimatic Regimes of Carbon Stability in Northern Peatlands: Holocene Data Analysis and Process-Based Modeling

  NSF · $627k · 2006–2011

• Collaborative Research: High Resolution Records of Holocene Climate Change, Drought Variability and Monsoon Behavior from the Uinta Mountains of Utah

  NSF · $82k · 2004–2008

• Collaborative Research: A Synthesis of the Last 2000 Years of Climatic Variability from Arctic Lakes

  NSF · $141k · 2005–2009

Frequent coauthors

• L. C. Smith

  Providence College

  34 shared

• Yongwei Sheng

  32 shared

• David W. Beilman

  University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

  28 shared

• Lauren N. Brown

  27 shared

• James R. Holmquist

  Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

  25 shared

• Katrina A. Moser

  24 shared

• K. V. Kremenetski

  22 shared

• David F. Porinchu

  University of Georgia

  22 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2005

• M.S., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  2001

• B.S., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1999

Awards & honors

• Member of the National Academy of Science

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Lawren Sackh-95
• H. Bradley Shafferh-80
• Michael Alfaroh-66