Professor
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Monica G. Turner is the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology and a Vilas Research Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. A native New Yorker, Turner received her BS in Biology in 1980 from Fordham University, Bronx, NY, graduating summa cum laude. She obtained her PhD in Ecology in 1985 from the University of Georgia (UGA), where she studied disturbances and ecosystem processes in a salt marsh on Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia. She completed a 2-yr postdoc at UGA working on a broad-scale study of change in the Georgia landscape. Turner spent seven years as a research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory then joined the faculty of UW-Madison in 1994. Her research emphasizes causes and consequences of spatial heterogeneity in ecological systems, focusing primarily on forest ecosystem and landscape ecology. She has studied fire, vegetation dynamics, nutrient cycling, bark beetle outbreaks, and climate change in Greater Yellowstone for over 30 years, including long-term research on the 1988 Yellowstone fires. She also studies abrupt change in ecological systems, land-water interactions in Wisconsin landscapes, and spatial dynamics of ecosystem services. She has published ~ 285 scientific papers; authored or edited six books, including a 2nd edition of LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE; and is co-editor in chief of ECOSYSTEMS. Turner is a past-president of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a recipient of ESA’s Robert H. MacArthur and Eminent Ecologist Awards, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.