The MacArthur Geo-Genius: David Montgomery

This year's MacArthur Foundations Fellows were announced a few days ago, and geoscientist David Montgomery is richly deserving of his big cash grant. I learned long ago to read any paper that comes out with his name on it. He's been a leader in the line of research that ties continental erosion to plate tectonics. He discovered colossal glacial floods in the Himalaya. And he wrote two excellent books, one on the relationship of the salmon to recent geological history and the other on the crucial role of soil in sustainable civilization. Everybody likes him (for instance his local journalists at the Seattle P-I), and he could play himself credibly in a movie.

As a geomorphologist, David works in a tantalizing area of geology that reads the landscape itself as a record of the recent geologic past. Humans are sensitive to landscape by instinct—knowing where to look for water and friendly habitat is a crucial life skill that we have practiced in every setting on Earth, not just the African locales where the Homo genus originated. David enters this ancient, haunted terrain with a fresh eye and novel, testable ideas.

To close this entry the best thing I can do is point you to his article last year in GSA Today, "Is agriculture eroding civilization's foundation?" which summarizes much of his book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization for an audience of his fellow scientists.