Eric Davidson

Eric A. Davidson is Professor Emeritus at the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg, MD. He served as Director from 2015 to 2021. Previously, he was a Senior Scientist and served a term as President and Executive Director at the Woods Hole Research Center (opens in a new tab), Woods Hole, MA. His research in biogeochemistry includes the exchange of plant nutrients from the land to streams and groundwater and the exchange of greenhouse gases between the soil and the atmosphere. He works in a variety of ecosystems, including forests and agricultural lands in North and South America. Davidson holds a Ph.D. in forestry from North Carolina State University (opens in a new tab) and held post-doctoral positions in soil microbiology and biogeochemistry at the UC-Berkeley (opens in a new tab) and the NASA Ames Research Center (opens in a new tab). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and he is Fellow and Past-President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) (opens in a new tab). He is the AGU Ethics Chair and a senior editor of AGU Advances. In addition to his earlier book, You Can’t Eat GNP, which explores the links between economics and ecology for students and laypersons, Davidson has published a new book in 2022, Science for a Green New Deal: Connecting Climate, Economics, and Social Justice. He completed a Jefferson Science Fellowship (opens in a new tab) from the National Academies of Sciences (opens in a new tab), for which he worked as a science advisor to the Office of Environmental Quality (opens in a new tab) at the U.S. Department of State (opens in a new tab).  Since 2022, Davidson has been Principal Scientist at Spark Climate Solutions (opens in a new tab).