William Lauenroth appointed Joseph F. Cullman 3rd ’35 Professor
William Lauenroth, an ecologist who is internationally recognized as a leader in the science of dryland and grassland ecosystems, has been appointed the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd ’35 Professor, effective immediately.
He is a member of the faculty at Yale School of the Environment (YSE).
The endowment was created to focus on a professorship focused on teaching and research in the areas of wildlife, ecology, and biodiversity.
Lauenroth received his Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology from Colorado State University (CSU) in 1973. After serving as a research ecologist at CSU from 1973 to 1981, he was named an associate professor, and then professor, in the university’s Department of Range Science. In 1987 he became a full professor. In 2008 he was appointed full professor in the Department of Botany at the University of Wyoming, and remained as such until moving to Yale in 2016. He is currently an emeritus professor at Colorado State University, an adjunct professor at the University of Wyoming, and a full professor at YSE.
He works primarily on grassland and shrubland ecosystems, systems which cover approximately 40% of the planet’s terrestrial surface. A major area of his research focuses on plant population and community ecology, including the role of water in dryland ecosystems, and how these ecosystems respond to disturbances such as livestock grazing and climate change. Another focal area of his research is understanding water, nitrogen, and carbon cycling in dryland ecosystems. He uses a combination of field-based measurements and simulation modeling across spatial scales. He has studied the North America steppe for over 45 years as well as grasslands in Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Lauenroth has made major contributions to grassland and shrubland ecology. He has generated foundational work on the role of grazing on species diversity and composition of grasslands. He has also contributed to the understanding of large-scale geographic patterns of ecosystem structure and function. This work helped established the space-for-time method, in which variables are studied at sites that are at different stages of development in order to infer temporal trends over long time scales. Lauenroth has also generated new insights into coupled cycles of carbon and water in dryland ecosystems. His work on ecosystem responses to precipitation variability and climate change has been a cornerstone in the field of dryland ecohydrology.
Methodologically, Lauenroth is one of the early leaders in simulation modeling of ecosystems. He pioneered methods to use field-based measurements to develop ecosystem simulation models and statistical models that could be applied at regional scales. His collective work extends well beyond dryland ecology, making a venerable mark on ecology in general as well as rangeland management.
In 1982, he was one of two founding members of the Shortgrass Steppe (SGS) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program in the central plains of Colorado. He was PI of the program until 1996, and was co-PI from 1996-2002, and 2008-2010. He remained active in the SGS-LTER until the program ended in 2014. Much of the scientific understanding about grasslands emerges from the SGS-LTER. As the inaugural PI of the SGS-LTER, Lauenroth helped to develop a new era of total ecosystem modelling that involved large-scale and detailed simulations of the structure and functioning of ecosystems, advances that begun in grasslands and have now been implemented for shrub and forest-dominated ecosystems. He helped to usher in a new era of “big science” for ecosystem ecology.
Lauenroth has published more than 240 peer-reviewed papers, 55 book chapters and proceedings, and five books. Five of his papers have been cited over 1,000 times each. His contributions to the field have been recognized by several professional societies. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. He is an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering. In 2001, he was named to Thomson Reuters’ inaugural list of Highly Cited Researchers in the sciences, in the field of Ecology/Environment, based on publications between 1981 through 1999. He is ranked number 80 out of 2,000 in a list of ecology and evolutionary scientists in the United States, and 180 among 21,000 researchers worldwide, according to Research.com.
He has also had an impressive track record of extramural funding. He has been PI or co-PI on over $16 million in grants, mostly from the National Science Foundation, but also from the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
At Yale, Lauenroth has actively contributed to the community. He has chaired the Master of Environmental Science Admissions committee and led an effort to assess the admissions criteria for the program. He is currently driving forward advising and curricular changes for the program. He also serves on the research and doctoral committee, as well as our student onboarding committee, and is an active member on all. Both at Yale and his other institutions, he has a long history of contributing to the community and field through advising. He has mentored four postdocs, 21 doctoral students, and 14 research master’s students during his career. He currently teaches “Natural Science Research Methods,” which is a foundational course for all YSE natural science research masters students. Additionally, he teaches two drylands courses, and co-teaches the “Survival Skills for Doctoral Students” course with YSE Dean Indy Burke, which has become an important offering to the school’s doctoral students.
