EGS Honorary Membership 1997
Donald R. Nielsen 

for his pioneering and interdisciplinary research in soil physics and hydrology, involving both physical and chemical aspects of transport through the unsaturated zone of the soil
 
  Donald Nielsen is an internationally renowned scientist noted for his innovative achievements in areas of chemical transport through soil, in spatial variability of field  hydrological properties soils, in determining nitrogen pollution levels from agricultural operations, inof soils and in how soil management affects microbial transformations. During more than 20 years of his tenure at the University of California, Davis, he carried out a full teaching load in the classroom and a full research programme while serving simultaneously at several levels of administration within the College and the UC Academic Senate as well as serving as a statewide Director of the Kearney Foundation of soil Science and Director of the Food Protection and Toxicology Center. During the same period, he also served as Chair of two different large departments as well as being responsible as the Executive Associate Dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

He authored and co-authored more than 250 publications and was an invited speaker at numerous national and international conferences. He has been the president of the Soil Science Society of America, and the American Society of Agronomy. He also served as president of the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union as well as serving as president of the Soil Physics Division of the International Society of Soil Science. He has served on the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council NCR, served on panels of Remote Sensing for Soil and Water Resources of the Space Applications board of NRC and the Geophysics Board of Water Resources Review Committee of the Food and Agriculture Board of the National Academy of Science. Presently he is a member of the China Committee of NCR. He serves as Editor of Nitrogen in the Environment, Associate Editor, 1974 - 84, and Editor, 1984 - 88, of Water Resources Research and Associate Editor, 1974 - 90, of Outlook in Agriculture. He has also served on Editorial Boards of Irrigation Science and Agronomy Journal. Presently he serves on Editorial Boards of Journal of Soil Science, Soil Tillage Research, Journals of Ecological Modeling, Catena, Soil Technology, Trends in Agricultural Science and Journal of International Agrophysics. He also has served as consultant for the U.S. Army, NASA, California Department of Water Resources, California Department of Education, USEPA, FAO, USAID and USDA. While on sabbatical leave, he served as consultant to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1974 - 75. He is presently serving as a member of Board of Directors of the U.S. National Institute for Global Environmental Change, and is also serving on the Board of Directors, College of Soil Physics, International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy.

Through his teaching, research and administrative efforts, as well as his service on the many national and international organizations he has had a tremendous impact, not only in soil physics and soil and hydrological sciences, but on agricultural and environmental sciences in general.

Newsletter 63, 29, 1997