John Shroder

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Name: John Shroder
Member Since: October 11th, 2006
Member Name: John.shroder
Biography:

Dr. John F. Shroder is currently Regents Professor of Geography and Geology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he has taught since 1969. Dr. Shroder is an active geoscientist with plentiful research experience in South Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Middle East and Africa. Author and editor of 11 books and monographs, some 40 unpublished environmental consulting reports, over 100 professional papers, and a similar number of book reviews and published abstracts of presentations, Dr. Shroder has published on a variety of scientific topics dealing with landslides, glaciers, water supplies, floods, natural resources, development, and geoarchaeology.

In the 1972 Dr. Shroder and another faculty member initiated the Afghanistan Studies Center, as well as a project with Kabul University and the Government of Afghanistan to produce a National Atlas of Afghanistan. Support for the project was supplied from the US Department of State through the SEED (Scientists & Engineers in Economic Development) Grants Program run by the US National Science Foundation. In addition, Dr. Shroder was made advisor to the Kabul University Seismic Station by the US Geological Society and the US Embassy. His Fulbright award to Afghanistan was later terminated by the Communist takeover in late 1978 and the Soviet invasion of 1979. Following a three-month house arrest, Dr. Shroder worked thereafter during the Afghan/Soviet war on various issues related to the ongoing confrontation and in helping the Afghan Mujahideen. Awarded a Fulbright to Peshawar, Pakistan, in 1983-84, Dr. Shroder was then able to renew his work on geology, geography, and resources in South Asia, as well as lecturing in the Afghan refugee camps on clean water sources and sewage sanitation. Subsequently, in the 1980's he worked on US AID contracts to assess agriculture in Afghanistan during the war, as well as on a survey of mineral resources and hydrocarbons in Afghanistan for expected use in post-war redevelopment. Dr. Shroder has published and lectured extensively on natural resources and redevelopment in Afghanistan. He maintains the largest unclassified collection of maps of Afghanistan available, including much of the US DOD map catalogue, the British Quarter Inch map series, and many other topical maps and texts.

In the 1990's to the present day, Dr. Shroder has also focused much of his research on surface processes and natural hazards in the western Himalaya and Hindu Kush. For this he has received extensive grant support from National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Geographic Society, and Smithsonian Institution, and a number of private foundations. Elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Geological Society of America (GSA), and the Explorers Club, Dr. Shroder has also been awarded a Distinguished Career Award from the Mountain Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, the UNO Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity for 1988, the Aksarben Outstanding Educator Award for 1991, and the Golden Key National Honor Society in 1994. As Co-Director of the GLIMS (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space) Project at UNOmaha, Dr. Shroder is responsible for the GLIMS Regional Center focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is actively dealing with ice, snow, and melt-water resources in commonly drought-torn South Asia. Dr. Shroder is also extensively involved in voluntary managerial aspects of several of the professional organizations to which he belongs, being Chair of the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of GSA, and immediate past Chair of the Geology and Geography Section of AAAS, the organization to which he represents the Association of American Geographers as an affiliated society.