Currently an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Geography Department at the University of Nevada, Reno. I am a physical geographer who specializes in environmental change over both geologic and human time scales. I use tools such as stable and radiogenic isotope geochemistry and dendrochronology to investigate past environmental changes.

Because both geochemistry and dendrochronology are tools with a wide array of applications I have had the fortune to work on a diverse array of projects including reconstructing Pliocene climates in the Canadian Arctic to provenance studies of historic timbers from Bermuda. In aBecause both isotope geochemistry and dendrochronology are tools with a wide array of applications he works in multiple different areas that can be divided into four general themes. 1) Arctic climates and ecosystems: working to understand the paleoclimatology and paleoecology of Miocene-Pliocene aged fossil forests and to understand modern day plant climate responses, and investigating changes in biogeochemical cycling in the Arctic in response to climate change. 2) Reconstructing climates using stable isotopes from trees and sedimentary records: Adam has four projectsin thistheme including;reconstructing storm tracks in Washington State, investigating winter temperatures in Colorado,studying lower basin streamflow impacts in North Dakota and Nevada, and reconstructing lake levels in Nevada. 3) Tree and ecosystem responses to disturbance: studying the physiological responses of trees to insect and drought mortality events,and lookingat how water use relationships in ecosystems change in response to insect outbreaks. 4) Human-environment interactions: Adam is working with historical geographers, archeologists and historians in the Great Basin to evaluate the extent to which that drought disrupted Native American occupation, working with historians in Bermuda to investigate historic patterns of the timber tradein the 1800s, in Ontario to investigate exploitation of indigenous natural resources and lands by settlers, working with historians and other paleoscientists in Italy and Jamaica to look at historic land use changes, and in Wyoming using tree-ring and ice core chemistry to understand historic patterns of mercury pollution.