Dr. Diana H. Wall, University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University and Principal Investigator (PI) on the McMurdo Dry Valleys (MCM) LTER program was named the 2013 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement awardee in March. The Tyler Prize has been one of the premier awards in environmental sciences for the past 40 years. Previous winners include E.O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, Jared Diamond, Thomas Lovejoy, Mario Molina, Richard Alley, Charles Keeling, and Lonnie Thompson, to name a few.
Wall has been a PI on the McMurdo program since its initiation in 1993. Along with her students, post docs, and collaborators, including long-time collaborator Ross Virginia (another MCM-LTER PI), she has co-authored numerous papers on the ecology of Antarctic soils, and is considered one the world's experts on the topic. In 2006 a valley in Antarctica was named after her. But her work includes many other non-Antarctic related contributions as well. Besides her work at MCM, she was involved at the Konza and Jornada sites and is currently an investigator at the Kellogg LTER site.
Among her many service activities for the ecological community, Wall has been President of the Ecological Society of America, the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the Society of Nematologists, and is a former chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. She also served as Co-chair of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program from 2003-2006. Most recently she was the 2012 Tansley Lecturer of the British Ecological Society, served on the U.S. Antarctic Program Blue Ribbon Panel, and was a member of the NRC Committee on Future Science Opportunities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.