William H. Schlesinger

Bio and Research:

William H. Schlesinger is James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Biogeochemistry and Former Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University.

Completing his A.B. at Dartmouth (1972), and Ph.D. at Cornell (1976), he joined the faculty at Duke in 1980. He is the author or coauthor of over 160 scientific papers and the widely-adopted textbook Biogeochemistry: An analysis of global change (Academic Press, 2nd ed. 1997). He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995 and The National Academy of Sciences in 2003. He was President of the Ecological Society of America for 2003-2004.

Currently, Schlesinger focuses his research on global change ecology. He is the co-principal investigator for the Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment (FACE) Experiment in the Duke Forest—a project that aims to understand how an entire forest ecosystem (vegetation and soils) will respond to growth in elevated CO2. He has also worked extensively in desert ecosystems and their response to global change—often leading to the degradation of soils and regional desertification. From 1991 to 2000, he served as Principal Investigator for the NSF-sponsored program of Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) at the Jornada Basin in southern New Mexico. His past work has taken him to diverse habitats, ranging from Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia to the Mojave Desert of California. His research has been featured on NOVA, CNN, NPR, and on the pages of Discover, National Geographic, The New York Times, and Scientific American.

Schlesinger has testified before U.S. House and Senate Committees on a variety of environmental issues, including preservation of desert habitats and global climate change.