Michael Pisaric was educated at Brock University, St. Catharines, McMaster University, Hamilton (M.Sc), and Queen’s University, Kingston (Ph.D). Mike joined the faculty in 2002 after completing a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Big Sky Institute at Montana State University. His research interests centre on how climate change affects vegetation development at the subarctic and subalpine treelines. Mike is also interested in the importance of fire in boreal ecosystems. We are using a number of paleoecological tools to carry out our studies, including, tree ring analysis, fossil pollen and stomata preserved in lake sediments and the analysis of charcoal preserved in lake sediment to analyze past fire activity. Mike has worked in northern regions of Canada, the former Soviet Union and in mountain regions throughout western North America.