Melinda M. Adams

Melinda Adams profile headshot
  • Langston Hughes Assistant Professor
  • Joint Appointment with Indigenous Studies

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Biography —

Dr. Melinda Adams is a member of the N’dee San Carlos Apache Tribe and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science and the Indigenous Studies Program at the University of Kansas. A cultural fire practitioner and scholar, her research focuses on the revitalization of cultural fire (prescribed fire led with Traditional Ecological Knowledge) with Tribes in California and more recently with Tribes in the Midwest. Her work with Indigenous communities lives at the nexus of environmental science (physical geography), environmental policy, and Indigenous studies methodologies. Dr. Adams holds her Bachelor of Science from Haskell Indian Nations University (one of thirty-seven Tribal Colleges located in the U.S.), her Master of Science from Purdue University, and PhD from the University of California, Davis.

Research —

Research interests:

  • Pyrogeography
  • Biogeography
  • Climate Change
  • Indigenous Science
  • Traditional Ecological Knowledge
  • Indigenous Methodologies

Grants & Other Funded Activity —

2024. Principal Investigator. National Science Foundation. Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR). Indigenous Cultural Burns and Research in Resiliency with Tribes.

 

2024. Principal Investigator. University of Kansas Office of Research New Faculty Research Development Grant. Building Tribal Partnerships for Indigenous-led Cultural Fire Research in Kansas.

 

2023. Co-Principal Investigator. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Sub-award from National Sloan Indigenous Graduate Partnership. With Johnson, J.T., Sutley, E., Cartwright. P., and Brewer, J.

2023. Co-Principal Investigator. National Science Foundation (NSF) Planning Proposals to Catalyze Innovative and Inclusive Wildland Fire Science through Diverse Collaborations. High-Spatiotemporal Resolution Sensing and Digital Twin to Advance Wildland Fire Science With Chao, H., Xin, M,, and Hu, X.