Tyler KarpAssistant Professor

Research Focus:

Paleoecology, Organic and Isotope Geochemistry, Fire Ecology

Email:

atkarp@uchicago.edu

Office:

Hinds 221

Research Focus

Paleoecology, Organic and Isotope Geochemistry, Fire Ecology

Biography

I am a molecular paleoecologist, who uses organic geochemical and stable isotopic tools to study how disturbance processes, such as wildfire and herbivory, interacted with carbon cycling and climate change in ancient terrestrial ecosystems. My work mainly focuses on fires in savannas and grasslands, which today account for ~80% of global annual burned area. Before starting at the University of Chicago, I was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with a joint appointment at Yale University and Brown University. I received a bachelor’s in Biology and Environmental Earth Science from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015 and a PhD in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University in 2020.
 

Research Interests

My research program aims to better understand how feedbacks between changing fire, climate, and biotic (i.e., floral and faunal) interactions lead to abrupt landscape transitions on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. To examine these processes today and in the geologic past, I use a combination of statistical, remote sensing, field ecology, and geochemical techniques. We also work to ground-truth and improve organic geochemical and isotope geochemistry proxies that can be applied in unique ways to better understand ecological disturbance in the past. Our ultimate goal is to resolve how grassy biomes and their fire regimes will respond to global climate change, informing future management decisions by extending temporal context. My current and future research questions fall under three broad themes: 1) how grassland fire as an ecological process has changed through time, 2) how herbivore evolution and extinctions altered paleofire regimes, and 3) how grassland fire contributes to carbon cycling and storage.

Selected Publications

Karp, A.T., Koerner, S.E.,  Hempson, G.P.,  Abraham, J.O.,  Anderson, T.M.,  Bond, W.J. et al. (2024) Grazing herbivores reduce herbaceous biomass and fire activity across African savannas. Ecology Letters,  27, e14450. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1111/ele.14450

Karp, A.T., Uno, K.T., Berke, M.A., Russell, J.M., Scholz, C.A., Marlon, J.R., Faith, J.T., Staver, A.C., (2023) Nonlinear rainfall effects on savanna fire activity across the African Humid Period. Quat. Sci. Rev. 304, 107994. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2023.107994

​Karp A.T., Faith J.T., Marlon, J.R., Staver, A.C., (2021) Global response of fire activity to late Quaternary grazer extinctions. Science. 374, 1145-1148. Available at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj1580

Karp A.T., Holman A. I., Hopper P., Grice K. and Freeman K. H. (2020) Fire Distinguishers: Refined interpretations of paleofire from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 289, 93–113. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2020.08.024.

Karp A.T., Behrensmeyer A. K. and Freeman K. H. (2018) Grassland fire ecology has roots in the late Miocene. PNAS 115, 12130–12135. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809758115