Pamela Matson

Pamela Matson is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute. Her research focuses on biogeochemical cycling and biosphere-atmosphere interactions in tropical forests and agricultural systems. Together with hydrologists, atmospheric scientists, economists, and agronomists, she analyzes the economic drivers and environmental consequences of land use and resource use decisions in developing world agricultural and natural ecosystems, with the objective of identifying practices that are economically and environmentally sustainable. With her students, she evaluates the response of tropical forests to nitrogen deposition and climate changes. Dr. Matson joined the Stanford faculty in 1997, following positions as professor at University of California-Berkeley and research scientist at NASA. She earned her BS at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, MS at Indiana University, and PhD at Oregon State University. She is currently the chair of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability, and past president of the Ecological Society of America. Dr. Matson serves on the board for trustees of several institutions including the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, and is founding editor-in-chief of the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, a senior fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992 and to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994. In 1995, Dr. Matson was selected as a MacArthur Fellow. In 2002, she was named the Burton and Deedee McMurtry University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford. BS, Biology, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire PhD, Forest Ecology, Oregon State University MS, Environmental Studies, Indiana University