Lisa J. Graumlich
Dr. Lisa J. Graumlich is currently Director of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at The University of Arizona, where she integrates her career-long interest in global climate change with the emerging issue of how to best manage natural resources in an uncertain future. As a researcher, she investigates how ecosystems and human societies adapt to climate change, with a special focus on severe and persistent droughts. She started her career at The University of Arizona where she was a faculty member in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research and the first Director of the University of Arizona’s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE). While Director of ISPE, she catalyzed the cross-campus interdisciplinary talent of UA researchers to define potential impacts of climate change on semi-arid regions. In 1999, she moved to Montana State University to direct the Big Sky Institute (BSI), where she fostered partnerships between researchers and managers to develop science-based knowledge relevant to conservation of biodiversity in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and other large protected areas. In 2007, she was recruited to be Director of the School of Natural Resources at The University of Arizona. She was given the mandate to broaden the School’s engagement with the grand challenges in environmental sciences and resource management. Under her leadership, the School has recruited new faculty in emerging fields such as ecological informatics, ecosystem services, and ecohydrology and stabilized its resource base in a time of decreasing state support for higher education.
Graumlich received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1985). Graumlich was named an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in 1999 and was elected as Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004.
