Katherine (Katie) Hirschboeck is a
retired emeritus faculty member in the Laboratory
of Tree-Ring Research and former chair of the
Global Change
Ph.D.Minor Graduate Interdisciplinary Program. She earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geography,
with a minor in Geology, from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her Ph.D.
degree in Geosciences was awarded by the University of Arizona in 1985 and her
dissertation examined the hydroclimatic causes of mixed distributions in Arizona
flood records, linking them to climatic variability. She was a Visiting
Assistant Professor in Geography at the University of Oklahoma in 1984 and
subsequently held a faculty position at Louisiana State University in the
Department of Geography and Anthropology where she was tenured as an Associate
Professor of Geography in 1990. In 1991, she joined the Laboratory of Tree-Ring
Research at the University of Arizona as an Associate Professor of Climatology
and officially retired in May 2017. She is still very active in a variety
of science and outreach activities on campus and in the community.
Katie held joint faculty appointments in the
departments of Hydrology and Atmospheric
Sciences and the School of Geography
and Development, and continues to maintain interdisciplinary ties with these
units, as well as the
Geosciences Department,
Arid Lands Resource Sciences, and
the Institute of the Environment.
Katie's research has focused on the climatology and
hydroclimatology of extreme events – especially floods, paleofloods, and
droughts, including their meteorological
and climatological causes and their long-term variability. Her
dendrochronology work has linked synoptic climatology and tree-ring responses to anomalous atmospheric
circulation patterns. Awards include the
University of
Arizona’s Provost Teaching Award, an editor's award from the American
Meteorological Society, and the Association of American Geographer's Warren J.
Nystrom Award for best dissertation.
Katie continues to be affiliated with many professional organizations including the Association
of American Geographers (for whom she served as the Water Resources Specialty
Group secretary/treasurer and chair); the American Quaternary Association (for
whom she served as paleoclimatology councilor); the American Meteorological
Society; American Geophysical Union; American
Water Resources Association; the Geological Society of America; and the
Tree-Ring Society. She also served on the National Academy of Sciences'
(NAS) Committee on Geography within the Board on Earth Sciences and
Resources of the NAS's Commission on Geosciences, Environment, and Resources.
|
