My undergraduate training and professional work experience has involved severe storms meteorology, and I continue to have research interests in this area, especially as it involves case studies of historical severe storm events. My focus during graduate school though was to become more interdisciplinary. This focus moved me into climatology, specializing in historical weather records, which bridge the gap between paleoclimatology and the modern record. A complication with historical weather records is the use of a non-standard methodology to observe and record the observations. This creates various non-climatic biases in the historical data that must be minimized before they can be attached to the modern record. Thus, my research in historical climatology also includes the development of computer programs to assist in screening and correcting these data for their inherent biases. The results of this research have broad applications to other disciplines such as archaeology, ecology, geology, history, and paleoclimatology, requiring interdisciplinary collaboration.

     I am also interested in the use of tree-rings to study instances of past moisture regimes. I have collaborated with Drs. Dave Stahle and Malcolm Cleaveland in the University of Arkansas Tree-Ring Lab along with their colleagues across the U.S. and in Mexico. This has involved the collection and development of precisely dated tree-ring chronologies across the southern United States, California, and Mexico. Tree-ring research also integrates with my research in historical weather records, and allows for independent tests to be made on instrumental datasets used to reconstruct precipitation amounts or drought indices.