Contributor: B. L. Turner

International Advisory Board

The Encyclopedia of Earth

B.L. Turner is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Turner has chaired committees relating to land-cover and land-use change for the National Research Council, NASA, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme-Human Dimensions Programme. He serves on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environmental Fund (UN), and sits on the Editorial Board of several prominent journals related to geography and environmental change.

Dr. Turner’s research focuses on land-cover and land-use change in the southern Yucatán peninsular region, a project that seeks to explain the dynamics of land-use/-cover change in the region over the past 25 years and explores ways to wed remote sensing- and social science-based models of this change. He also co-directs HERO (Human-Environment Regional Observatory), a research program that provides opportunities for students to analyze the causes and consequences of global environmental changes at local scales in faculty-led research projects.

Dr. Turner received a B.A. and M.A. in Geography from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.