Paul Laris Ph.D.

Paul Photo

Paul Laris Ph.D.

Professor and Chair of Geography California State University, Long Beach 1250 Bellflower Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90840 562 985-2357 plaris@csulb.edu | Office: PH1-210

 

Research and Teaching Interests

My research interests include savanna ecology, fire ecology, political ecology, biogeography, remote sensing of fire, and restoration ecology. I have conducted research in the savanna of Mali and the rangelands of Tierra del Fuego and I work with a great team of graduate students in chaparral, coastal sage scrub and oak woodland environments of California. My teaching interests include environmental courses such as International Environmental Issues, Humans as Agents of Environmental Change, Biogeography, Field Methods of Landscape Analysis, Landscape Restoration and the History of Geographic Thought. I am currently serving as Chair of the Geography Department. I am a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Mali 1987-1990). I live in Long Beach with my son Finn and have two sons, Copeland and Quincy in college at Berkeley.

Education

Ph. D. 2002 Geography. Clark University, Worcester MA 01610. M.S.  Environmental Studies. San Jose State University B.S.  Mechanical Engineering. University of California, Los Angeles

Selected Publications (e-mail me for copies)

Laris, P. & Jacobs, R. 2018. On the problem of “natural” savanna fires: Commentary on Veenendaal et al, 2018, New Phytologist (forthcoming).

Laris, P., Jo, Audrey., Wechsler, S., and Dadashi, S. 2018. The Effects of Landscape Pattern and Vegetation Type on the Fire Regime of a Mesic Savanna in Mali. Journal of Environmental Management. 227:134-145.

Brennan, S., Laris, P., & Rodrigue, C.M. 2018. Coyote brush as facilitator of native plant recovery in the Santa Monica Mountains. Madrono. 65(1):47-59.

Laris, P., Kone, M., Dembele, F. 2017. The Early/Late Fire Dichotomy: Time for a Reassessment of Aubréville’s Savanna Fire Experiments. Progress in Physical Geography 32: 611–634.

Laris, P., Brennan, S., Engelberg, K. 2017. Prepping the landscape: Coyote Brush invasion of southern California grasslands. Geographical Review (on-line). 

Laris, P., Dadashi, S., Jo, A. & Wechsler, S. 2016. Buffering the savanna: Fire regimes and disequilibrium ecology in West Africa. Plant Ecology 217: 583–596. 

Laris, P., Caillault, S., Dadashi, S. and Jo, A. 2015. Buffering the savanna: the human ecology and geography of burning in an unstable environment. Journal of Ethnobiology 35(1):111-139.

Laris, P., Foltz, J.D. & Voorhees, B. 2014. Taking from cotton to grow maize: The shifting practices of small-holder farmers in the cotton belt of Mali. Agricultural Systems (on-line).

Laris, P., Caillault, S., Dadashi, S. and Jo, A. 2014. Buffering the savanna: the human ecology and geography of burning in an unstable environment. Journal of Ethnobiology (forthcoming).

Laris, P., & Foltz, J.D. 2014. Cotton as Catalyst?: The Shifting role of fertilizer in Mali’s Cotton Belt. Human Ecology, (on-line). Engelberg, K.,

Laris, P., Nagy, B., and Eckardt, S. 2013. Comparing the Long-Term Impacts of Different Anthropogenic Disturbance Regimes on California Coastal Sage Scrub Recovery Professional Geographer (forthcoming).

Laris, P.,& Dembele, F. 2012. Humanizing savanna models: integrating natural factors and anthropogenic disturbance regimes to determine tree-grass dynamics in savannas Land Change Science (published on-line July 14, 2011). Ngo, M., Dallman,S.,

Laris, P., and Thien, D. 2012. Political Ecology of Emotion and Sacred Space: The Winnemem Wintu struggles with California water policy. Emotion, Space and Society (forthcoming). Foltz, J.D., Aldana, U.T.,

Laris, P. 2012. The Sahel’s Silent Maize Revolution: Analyzing Maize Productivity in Mali at the Farm-Level. NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 17801. http://www.nber.org/papers/w17801. National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.

Laris, P. 2011. Humanizing savanna biogeography: linking human practices with ecological patterns in a frequently burned savanna of southern Mali. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 101 (5): 1067-1088).

Laris, P., &Dembele, F. 2011. Humanizing savanna models: integrating natural factors and anthropogenic disturbance regimes to determine tree-grass dynamics in savannas Land Change Science (published on-line).

Kull, C.A., & Laris, P. 2009. Fire ecology and fire politics in Mali and Madagascar. Tropical Fire Ecology: Climate Change, Land Use and Ecosystem Dynamics. In Mark Cochrane (Ed.) Springer-Praxis, pp.171-226.

Laris, P. 2008. An anthropogenic escape route from the “Gulliver syndrome” in the West African savanna. Human Ecology 36: 789–805.

Laris, P. and Bakkoury, A. 2008. Nouvelles leçons d’une vieille pratique: Mosaïque du feu dans la savane du Mali. Bois et forêts des tropiques 296 (2): 5-16.

Klepeis, P. and Laris, P. 2008. Estancias, Hobby Ranching, and Chile’s Land Reform Legacy. The Geographical Review. 98 (3): 372-394.

Moseley, W. and Laris, P. 2008. Interrogating Past Lives: Questioning Environmental Narratives along the Transition from Development Volunteer to Academic. The Geographical Review 98 (1): 59-81.

Laris, P. and Wardell, D.A. 2006. Good, bad or “necessary evil?”: reinterpreting the colonial burning experiments in the savanna landscapes of West Africa. Geographical Journal 172(4): 217-290.

Klepeis, P., and Laris, P. 2006. Contesting Sustainable Development in Tierra del Fuego. Geoforum 37 (4): 505-518.

Laris, P. 2005. Spatiotemporal problems with detecting seasonal-mosaic fire regimes with coarse-resolution satellite data in savannas. Remote Sensing of Environment 99: 412-424.

Laris, P. 2002. Burning the Seasonal Mosaic: Preventative Burning Strategies in the Wooded Savanna of Southern Mali.  Human Ecology 30 (2): 155-186.

Peace Corps Programs

Geography & Technology

Research Projects

Fire Research in Mali

CSS Research in California

Paul’s CV

Courses

GEOG s355-15 GEOG 486/586 f18 GEOG 596_f18  

More Mali Projects

Mali Schoolhouse