Rate My Professor Michael Stambaugh,

Michael Stambaugh serves as Associate Professor of Forest Ecology in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Missouri, where he also directs the Center for Tree-Ring Science and chairs the Oak Woodlands & Forests Fire Consortium. Before entering academia, he worked as a forester for private industry and the federal government. Stambaugh earned his Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Missouri in 2008. Since 2010, his research program has garnered over $8 million in grant funding, supporting collaborations with agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and The Nature Conservancy. He has served as director of the Center for Tree-Ring Science since 2017 and was awarded tenure in 2025.

His research investigates forest ecosystem changes across time and space, emphasizing fire ecology, forest management, and dendrochronology. Utilizing tree-rings for precise, long-term records, Stambaugh explores fire regimes, vegetation dynamics, tree growth, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Notable publications include "Predicting fire frequency with chemistry and climate" (Ecosystems, 2012), "Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) fire scars reveal new details of a frequent fire regime" (Journal of Vegetation Science, 2011), "Historic fire regime dynamics and forcing factors in the Boston Mountains, Arkansas, USA" (Forest Ecology and Management, 2006), "Fire scars reveal variability and dynamics of eastern fire regimes" (2006), and "Wave of fire: an anthropogenic signal in historical fire regimes across central Pennsylvania, USA" (Ecosphere, 2018). With over 4,400 citations on Google Scholar, his work has advanced knowledge of historical fire regimes and informed forest management strategies. Stambaugh has been a National Geographic Explorer since 2010, received the Charles Bullard Fellowship in Forest Research at Harvard Forest in 2023, and chairs the Research, Scholarship, and Economic Development Committee on the MU Faculty Council. He teaches Forest Ecology, Forest Health, and Advanced Forest Ecology, and is currently accepting graduate students.