2019 Distinguished Service Award
Todd Lookingbill
Dr. Todd Lookingbill, Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Richmond was awarded the 2019 Distinguished Service Award by the U.S. Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US-IALE) at their annual meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado, in April 2019. The award for Distinguished Service recognizes individuals who have contributed exceptionally to the society. Notably, when he stepped into the role of the Awards Committee Chair, he provided excellent leadership to a committee that oversees several very important and complex aspects of the society, including distinguished awards, travel grants, and student presentation competitions. The nominators for Dr. Lookingbill’s award noted that his service work “helps build pride in US-IALE and enhances the profile of our discipline”.
Dr. Lookingbill was first introduced to landscape ecology as an undergraduate student, where he conducted a succession study of olive orchards in Catalonia and realized how much could be learned from observations of spatial pattern. After a few years working as an environmental consultant on natural resource damage assessments, he returned to school to get his PhD under Dean Urban at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. His dissertation examined the community ecology of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, and he still spends a week or two every summer on a long-term study of how changes in snowpack influence plant distributions within these forests. After almost 20 years, he is starting to see patterns that can only be observed from long-term study and not a typical 3-5 year project.
Dr. Lookingbill has been a member of US-IALE for nearly 20 years. As a student he received the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award and benefitted from the many unique opportunities afforded to students at US-IALE meetings. These interactions as much as anything else in his graduate experience helped direct his career pathway as a landscape ecologist. After graduate school, he felt it was important to pay back some of the goodwill, and started helping out to judge student presentations at the meetings. His service commitments have expanded tremendously since. In 2017, he was the Program Chair for the Annual Meeting in Baltimore, from 2012 to 2018 he was Chair of the Awards Committee, and as of 2017 he is Chair of the Nominating Committee. He is also a coordinating editor for Landscape Ecology.
Dr. Lookingbill was grateful to receive this award and wanted to emphasize that what he values most about US-IALE is how explicit the organization is about supporting students. When asked what motivates him to contribute to the society he stated: “My passion is introducing and engaging students in landscape ecology. That is what I love about US-IALE. No society cares more about its student members than US-IALE.”
Todd received his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Duke University. His research areas include landscape connectivity, habitat modeling, watershed assessment, and battlefield ecology. He just finished editing a book describing the unanticipated ecosystem benefits that may arise after the destructive wave of warfare has washed over a landscape, showing how the preservation of battlefields primarily for their cultural or historical significance can create valuable natural capital as a byproduct. He and his students have worked broadly with the National Park Service on landscape monitoring and environmental assessment studies, especially within urban and suburban settings of the Mid-Atlantic.
For more information about Dr. Lookingbill, please visit his website at https://blog.richmond.edu/tlookingbill/
Dr. Todd Lookingbill, Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Richmond was awarded the 2019 Distinguished Service Award by the U.S. Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (US-IALE) at their annual meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado, in April 2019. The award for Distinguished Service recognizes individuals who have contributed exceptionally to the society. Notably, when he stepped into the role of the Awards Committee Chair, he provided excellent leadership to a committee that oversees several very important and complex aspects of the society, including distinguished awards, travel grants, and student presentation competitions. The nominators for Dr. Lookingbill’s award noted that his service work “helps build pride in US-IALE and enhances the profile of our discipline”.
Dr. Lookingbill was first introduced to landscape ecology as an undergraduate student, where he conducted a succession study of olive orchards in Catalonia and realized how much could be learned from observations of spatial pattern. After a few years working as an environmental consultant on natural resource damage assessments, he returned to school to get his PhD under Dean Urban at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. His dissertation examined the community ecology of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, and he still spends a week or two every summer on a long-term study of how changes in snowpack influence plant distributions within these forests. After almost 20 years, he is starting to see patterns that can only be observed from long-term study and not a typical 3-5 year project.
Dr. Lookingbill has been a member of US-IALE for nearly 20 years. As a student he received the NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Award and benefitted from the many unique opportunities afforded to students at US-IALE meetings. These interactions as much as anything else in his graduate experience helped direct his career pathway as a landscape ecologist. After graduate school, he felt it was important to pay back some of the goodwill, and started helping out to judge student presentations at the meetings. His service commitments have expanded tremendously since. In 2017, he was the Program Chair for the Annual Meeting in Baltimore, from 2012 to 2018 he was Chair of the Awards Committee, and as of 2017 he is Chair of the Nominating Committee. He is also a coordinating editor for Landscape Ecology.
Dr. Lookingbill was grateful to receive this award and wanted to emphasize that what he values most about US-IALE is how explicit the organization is about supporting students. When asked what motivates him to contribute to the society he stated: “My passion is introducing and engaging students in landscape ecology. That is what I love about US-IALE. No society cares more about its student members than US-IALE.”
Todd received his BA from Princeton University and his PhD from Duke University. His research areas include landscape connectivity, habitat modeling, watershed assessment, and battlefield ecology. He just finished editing a book describing the unanticipated ecosystem benefits that may arise after the destructive wave of warfare has washed over a landscape, showing how the preservation of battlefields primarily for their cultural or historical significance can create valuable natural capital as a byproduct. He and his students have worked broadly with the National Park Service on landscape monitoring and environmental assessment studies, especially within urban and suburban settings of the Mid-Atlantic.
For more information about Dr. Lookingbill, please visit his website at https://blog.richmond.edu/tlookingbill/
