• Using tree-ring analysis and other research tools to understand disturbance processes (particularly fire) and landscape pattern, and relationships to climate.
• Using tree-ring analysis to understand how disturbance processes affects tree biology.
• Synthesizing existing scientific information for scientists and managers.
• Relationship between disturbance and forest community dynamics.
• Application of prescribed burn.

Ph.D. 1989. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, Department of Watershed Management, and Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

M.S. 1983. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, Department of Geosciences, and Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

B.A. 1978. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, Department of Environmental Sciences.

Visiting student, Oct. 1976 - June 1977. Sussex University, Falmer, Sussex, England, Chemistry Department, Environmental Sciences program.

• Characterizing disturbance regimes in riparian zones of Western Montana. (2000-present) We (Dr. M.K. Young, RMRS, and Sutherland) are evaluating how disturbance processes and time-since-disturbance alter streamside and stream characteristics, large woody debris, and ultimately, fish habitat on the Bitterroot and Lolo National Forests. Sutherland’s group has developed spatially-explicit fire-scar histories and age structures of riparian forest and uplands for 12 watersheds. This information will provide the scientific basis for fire and forest management plans. Sutherland is expanding this work to similar forests to the north and to the east with the goal of clarifying disturbance processes and landscape pattern in subalpine forests in relation to factors such as topography and climate.
• FHAES: Fire History Analysis and Exploration System. (2006-2007) The FHAES project is a collaborative effort by individuals from several federal agencies and universities whose goal is to revise a very widely used program (FHX2) used to analyze fire history data. This program, written in 1992 in a DOS-based system, is in need of updating. Sutherland initiated and has coordinated this effort, which is now being tested in beta version. See the FRAMES portal at http://frames.nbii.gov and navigate to the fire history subject area, and then to the FHAES page.
• IMPD Decision Support Tool. (2007-2008) The Paleoclimatology Division at NOAA hosts a fire history database of information contributed by researchers. This information is presently available only as raw and meta data but could be more useful to fire and land managers and the public in a summarized format. Sutherland is collaborating in a project involving several federal agencies, universities, and NGOs that will ultimately provide this information in a standardized format.
• Science Synthesis: Applied wildland fire research in support of project level hazardous fuel planning. Many scientists are working on this national effort to synthesize the best scientific information for managers planning fuel treatments and to deliver it in a useful way. Sutherland is team leader for the Environmental Consequences group; we are synthesizing and delivering information about potential effects of fuel treatments on trees, plants (especially weeds), wildlife, air, water, and soil. See http://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/fuels/ for more information.
• Science Synthesis: Applied wildland fire research in support of project level hazardous fuel planning. Many scientists are working on this national effort to synthesize the best scientific information for managers planning fuel treatments and to deliver it in a useful way. Sutherland is team leader for the Environmental Consequences group; we are synthesizing and delivering information about potential effects of fuel treatments on trees, plants (especially weeds), wildlife, air, water, and soil. See http://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/fuels/ for more information.
• Fire histories of oak forests in southern Ohio. Sutherland collected crossections from twelve recently logged sites in southern Ohio, and is evaluating the history of fire within and among those sites. Indications are that fire occurred frequently (4-7 year return interval) and played an important role in community dynamics of oak forests.
• Using prescribed burning to restore mixed-oak forests of southern Ohio. (1994-present) Oak forests in eastern North America are resistant to fire effects and resilient to injury and topkill, but are at a competitive disadvantage when fire is suppressed. Sutherland led a large interdisciplinary team that designed and implemented a prescribed burning experiment to restore oak compositional and structural dominance in the understory, and to evaluate those treatments in the context of the vegetation community, arthropods, birds, and soil dynamics over the landscape

Sutherland, E.K., M.E. Velasquez, A.E. Black, W.J. Elliot, M.S. Kim, D. Pilliod, S.D. Sutherland. In review. Science information for informing forest fuel management in the dry forests of the western United States: Environmental Consequences. Journal of Forestry.

Young, M.K., E.A. Mace, E. Ziegler, and E.K. Sutherland. 2006. Characterizing and contrasting instream and riparian coarse wood in western Montana streams. Forest Ecology and Management 226:26-40.

Mace, E.A., R. Ahl,, M.K. Young, and E.K. Sutherland. Manuscript in preparation. Using cluster analysis to select biophysically similar watersheds for landscape-scale field studies.

Sutherland, E.K. and A.E. Black, Editors. Guidebook for tools to evaluate the consequences of hazardous fuels treatment. In preparation as a General Technical Report.

Hutchinson, T.F., E.K. Sutherland and D.A. Yaussy. 2005. Effects of repeated prescribed fires on the structure, composition, and regeneration of mixed-oak forests in southern Ohio. Forest Ecology and Management 218:210-228.

Hutchinson, T.F., R.E.J. Boerner, S. Sutherland, E.K. Sutherland, M. Ortt, L. Iverson. 2005. Prescribed fire effects on the herbaceous layer of mixed-oak forests. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35:877-890.

Sutherland, E.K., and T.F. Hutchinson, Editors. Characteristics of mixedñoak forests in southern Ohio. Northeastern Forest Service Experiment Station General Technical Report 299, US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Newtown Square, PA. 159 pages. (Also four additional chapters inside.)

Smith, K.T. and E.K. Sutherland. 2001. Terminology and biology of fire scars in selected central hardwoods. Tree-Ring Research 57(2):141-147.

Artman, V.L., E.K. Sutherland, and J.F. Downhower. 2001. Prescribed burning to restore mixed-oak communities in southern Ohio: Effects on breeding-bird populations. Conservation Biology 15(5) 1423-1434.

Boerner, R.E.J., E.K. Sutherland, S.J. Morris, and T.F. Hutchinson. 2000. Spatial variations in the impact of prescribed fire on soil nitrogen dynamics in a forested landscape. Landscape Ecology 15(5):425-439.

Sutherland, E.K., B.J. Hale, and D.M. Hix. 2000. Tree regeneration guilds in the central hardwood forest, USA. Plant Ecology 147(1):1-20.

Smith, K. and E.K. Sutherland. 1999. Fire scar formation and compartmentalization in oak. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29:166-171.

Sutherland, E.K. 1997. The history of fire in a southern Ohio second-growth mixed-oak forest. In: Pallardy, S.G; Cecich, R.A., Garrett, H.E., and Johnson, P.S., Eds. Proceedings of the 11th Central Hardwoods Forest Conference, March 1997. GTR NC-188. USDA Forest Service North Central Experiment Station, St. Paul, Minn. P. 172-183.

• Tree-Ring Society (presently Secretary, Tree Ring Society Council)
• Association of Fire Ecologists
• Ecological Society of America
• Natural Areas Association
• International Association of Landscape Ecology