Diana Harrison Wall
(Formerly Freckman)

Dr. Diana Wall is Professor and Director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, an international ecosystem research center at Colorado State University.

Her research addresses the importance of soil biodiversity for ecosystems and society. Specifically, she investigates how soil biodiversity contributes to healthy, productive soils and the consequences of human activities on soil sustainability. Dr. Wall examines the diverse invertebrate group, soil nematodes, in ecosystems of varying land uses, including agriculture. She is currently conducting research in simple and complex ecosystems. Since 1989, she has spent more than 13 field seasons in a cold desert ecosystem, the Antarctic Dry Valleys, investigating global change impacts on the few soil species. In the highly diverse tallgrass prairie of Kansas, her research examines the linkage between aboveground and belowground diversity and how disturbance, including global change, influences soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes. She promotes an integrated research approach to understanding ecosystems and solving environmental problems.

Dr. Wall is engaged in a wide array of professional service and public outreach activities to organize scientific research and communicate its importance to society. She chairs the Global Litter Invertebrate Decomposition Experiment (GLIDE), and was recently chair of the DIVERSITAS-International Biodiversity Observation Year-2001- 2002, a program to demonstrate the importance of biodiversity science to the future of our planet. Dr. Wall also chairs the SCOPE Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning, is Co-chair of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and President of the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers. She has served as President of the Ecological Society of America, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Intersociety Consortium for Plant Protection, the Society of Nematologists and as Chair, Council of Scientific Society Presidents. Dr. Wall is a recipient of the 2003 Professional Achievement Award from the Soil Ecology Society, a Fellow of the Society of Nematologists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and was a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California Bodega Marine Laboratory. She is a founding member of the US National Committee on Soil Science.

Dr. Wall presents invited lectures on subjects such as, the biodiversity of soil invertebrates, the underground biological world; Antarctic ecosystems; survival of organisms in extreme environments; the integration of agriculture and ecology; the diversity and ecology of life in soils; women in science; and science education. Her research has been featured in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, including the New York Times, National Geographic magazine, and PBS TV shows such as Horizons and Discovery.

Dr. Wall has authored numerous scientific papers, articles and reports. She edited two books, Nematodes in Soil Ecosystems, (1982, Univ. Texas Press, D. W. Freckman, ed) and Sustaining Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Soils and Sediments (in press, 2004, Island Press, Washington, DC, D. H. Wall, ed). She obtained a Ph.D. in plant pathology at the University of Kentucky, Lexington and has taught at Mobile College, Alabama, California State University, Fresno and prior to her present position at CSU, was a Professor at the University of California, Riverside.