Biography: Tom Dunne

Tom Dunne was briefly mentored by Demonstrator Olav Slaymaker at Cambridge University before earning a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. While working for the USDA Agricultural Research Service and McGill University Geography Department, he conducted research on the effects of topography, soil characteristics, and vegetation on runoff processes under rainfall and snowmelt in Vermont and Labrador. Teaching at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, he initiated an enduring research interest in Africa, including experimental studies of runoff and erosion, and statistical studies and field surveys of the effects of land use on hillslope erosion and basin sediment yields. He spent more than two decades in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Washington, enjoying annual visits with the UBC Hydrology group, and supervising research on landslides and debris flows; basin sediment budgets in natural and managed forests; tephra erosion and lahars on active volcanoes; and sediment transport and channel morphology in sand-bed and gravel-bed river channels. From his beachside office at the University of California at Santa Barbara, this hair-shirted product of glaciated, coal-bearing regions now studies hydrology, sediment transport, and floodplain sedimentation in the Amazon River of Brazil, the Andes Range and adjacent floodplains of eastern Bolivia, and the Sacramento River valley of central California. Geographia vos liberabit!