Research Hydrologist, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Boise, ID, USA

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes leaders representing various identities, voices and perspectives. List any identities, voices and perspectives you would bring, including but not limited to nationality, regional representations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

I am an experienced government scientist who has conducted research for a wildland conservation agency for 37 years. Living in the western U.S. over the last several decades, I have watched the accelerating landscape changes and interacted with many people and groups seeking to understand and address them. The agency’s applied, solution-oriented conservation mission has provided a meaningful foundation and tension for these conversations and my research. Caring that land and water are well cared for is a wonderfully widespread conviction, leading to the privilege of working with, and learning from, people representing a great array of places and backgrounds, and my long experience in this unique place has brought a perspective about the value of holding space for diverse voices and perspectives.

Volunteer experience that you feel relates to this position:

Chair, AGU Hydrology section Surface Water Committee, 2007-2009; AGU Fall Meeting Program Committee, 2012-2015; Secretary, AGU Hydrology section, 2017-2021 (two terms); Associate Editor Water Resources Research, 2013-2017; Editor Water Resources Research, 2017-2022.

Section presidents and presidents-elect serve as members of the AGU Council and lead their sections. The AGU Council is a diverse forum of perspectives that meets throughout the year to provide input to the AGU Board, staff, and other parts of the organization. Three communities within the Council - committee chairs, section leaders, and students and early career scientists - serve different roles in AGU and bring unique viewpoints to ongoing discussions.

This role aims to catalyze community and build AGU as envisioned by the strategic plan. This leadership position is a dual role: helping to advance AGU’s strategic plan as a member of Council; and leading your section. How would you support the Board, staff and other sections to achieve AGU’s vision, values, mission, and goals? How will you engage with members of your section to execute AGU’s strategic plan?

AGU’s strategic plan describes a thoughtfully woven set of principles and actions encompassing connections between science and society. Its vision expresses the value of science in benefiting humanity, and its mission conveys AGU’s support to actualize that value. Further incorporating six ideals relating quality, community, and generativity, the plan delivers three integrated goals on solution-based science, inclusivity, and partnership.

I was excited to see support for bridging discovery with solution-based science. This blend nourished me through a long career with satisfying outcomes for people and the environment. Applied science is sometimes underappreciated, and I smiled when thinking about what encouraging coupled discovery and solution science might mean to emerging generations of scientists.

Effectively addressing pressing environmental challenges for society is best served with an inclusive stance toward participation in, and service from, the scientific community. Local knowledge provides not only answers but more useful questions, and diverse perspectives illuminate critical facets of sticky challenges. Partnering with Indigenous and other underserved communities to reveal new questions and perspectives, and providing support, education, and engagement that enables those communities to generate more deeply informed solutions themselves, while simultaneously contributing to broader scientific understanding, could generate more frequent successful outcomes to multiple stakeholders. Open science and publications amplify positive outcomes towards these ends, too.

I would support achieving these goals and ideals by voicing their value, as I have in past publications. I would further encourage members and committees in the section by highlighting platforms for them to add their voices and examples.