Profile of Dr. Diana Wall

Colorado State University
Department of Biology & Natural Resource Ecology Lab
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1499
Phone: (970) 491-2504
diana@nrel.colostate.edu

Director, School of Global Environmental Sustainability; Professor, Biology, Senior Research Scientist

Education: Ph.D. Plant Pathology, University of Kentucky, 1971

Dr. Wall’s research addresses the importance of soil biodiversity for ecosystems and society. Specifically, she investigates how soil biodiversity contributes to healthy, productive, and sustainable soils, and the consequences of human activities and global change on soil sustainability. Dr. Wall is actively engaged in soil ecosystem research in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica where she is part of the McMurdo Dry Valley Long-Term Ecological Research site.  She studies soil nematodes—a diverse  invertebrate group—in  ecosystems of varying land uses. Her research looks at the link between aboveground and belowground diversity and how disturbance influences soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes.  Dr. Wall promotes integrated research as a means of understanding ecosystems and solving environmental problems.  She  chaired the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning and edited the volume, Sustaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Soils and Sediments (2004, Island Press). Diana is a member of the Advisory Committee, Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility-CIAT Project on Conservation and Sustainable Management of Belowground Biodiversity and is on the Advisory Board for the United Kingdom’s Population Biology Network. She served as President of the Ecological Society of America, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Intersociety Consortium for Plant Protection, the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, and the Society of Nematologists.