Dr. George Malanson Receives AAG Lifetime Achievement Award

Dec 10, 2015 to Jan 29, 2016

The 2016 AAG Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to Susan Christopherson and George Malanson.

"The AAG Lifetime Achievement Award goes to George Malanson who holds the position of Coleman – Miller Professor in the Department of Geographical & Sustainability Science at the University of Iowa while simultaneously serving as Program Director, Population & Community Ecology Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Malanson began his career at Williams College where he took a Bachelor’s degree in Art. Prior to completing his Master’s in Geography at the University of Utah, he studied Hindi at the U. S. Department of State, Foreign Service Institute. He earned his PhD at UCLA under the tutelage of W. E. Westman.

Malanson’s career trajectory has been wide ranging and varied. He served as an illustrator/draftsman with the US Army, a cartographic draftsman with the Wm Moore Survey and Mapping Co, and bio-geographer with the Archaeology Division of the ESCA Tech Corporation—all of which prepared him for his exceptional approach to scholarship which many have described as “transformative; inherently integrative and explicitly positioned within geographic traditions and debates.”

Professor Malanson Prof. Malanson has (co)-authored more than 170 journal articles, (co)-authored two books and (co)-edited three multi-author contributions. His work has been cited more than 2400 times and he has been involved research that has received nearly $3.5 million of external funding. Combined, these place Prof. Malanson in the very upper-echelon of physical geographers-indeed all geographers.

One of the striking characteristics of Malanson’s work is linking natural factors and processes at different scales (micro, local, regional) with human impact. It is this complex, synthetic view that is of major importance for truly understanding the rapidly changing environment. As one letter writer noted, George’s work tackles some of the biggest challenges of the decades to come – the relationship between conservation, human impact, and natural disturbance.

He has been described as a creative thinker, an innovator, and a researcher with extensive knowledge of both the literature and technical innovations. “Many physical geographers generate empirical results, but Dr. Malanson carries his work to the next phase and contributes new understandings to the theoretical and predictive patterns of natural landscapes.”

Based on these many accomplishments and the high regard he is accorded in the profession by his students and peers, we recognize George Malanson and award him the AAG Lifetime Achievement Award."