Citation by Brian A. Ebel Kamini Singha
It is an honor to present Dr. Michelle Walvoord’s O.E. Meinzer Award citation in recognition of her transformative contributions to cold regions hydrogeology.
Michelle Walvoord has profoundly influenced research directions and practice in the hydrogeology community through ingenuity, technical mastery, and teamwork. Dr. Walvoord’s publications have defined how climatic shifts in cold regions are increasingly driving substantial changes in water resources and transforming ecosystems. Her research leverages field data and statistical and process-based modeling approaches at multiple spatial and temporal scales to address coupled hydrologic and biogeochemical responses to climate perturbations.
Highlights from Michelle Walvoord’s contributions include (1) the first large-scale effort to quantify decadal-scale baseflow patterns in Alaska, which showed definitively that groundwater contributions to streamflow were increasing with regional warming (Walvoord and Striegl, 2007), (2) provocatively proposing that perennially thawed subsurface zones were a sentinel for tipping points in accelerating permafrost thaw demonstrated through coupled cryohydrogeologic modeling (Walvoord et al., 2019; Walvoord et al., 2012), (3) a foundational review paper that established the state of cryosphere hydrology and charted a course to navigate theoretical and observational gaps (Walvoord and Kurylyk, 2016), and (4) unprecedented regional-scale imaging of permafrost, highlighting how permafrost thaw can leave millennial-timescale legacies for groundwater flow and yielding new conceptual understanding and hypotheses for groundwater- cryosphere linkages (Minsley et al., 2012).
Mentoring the next generation of hydrogeologists is perhaps the greatest contribution that we, as scientists and engineers, make to our field. Michelle Walvoord is a generous mentor and advocate for numerous graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early-career colleagues.
Congratulations Michelle!
Cited Publications
Walvoord and Striegl (2007): https://doi.org/10.1029/2007GL030216
Walvoord et al. (2012): https://doi.org/10.1029/2011WR011595
Minsley et al. (2012): https://doi.org/10.1029/2011GL050079
Walvoord and Kurylyk (2016): https://doi.org/10.2136/vzj2016.01.0010
Walvoord et al. (2019): https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaf0cc
Response by Michelle A. Walvoord
My heartfelt thanks to Brian Ebel for the eloquent citation, to my esteemed colleagues who supported the nomination, and to the GSA Hydrogeology Division for continuing to shine a light on important scientific contributions to our field. It is an honor of a lifetime to join the distinguished ranks of Meinzer award recipients.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have had inspiring mentors and peers at every stage in my career. During my graduate studies in hydrology, my advisor Fred Phillips encouraged creative exploration and the freedom to pivot when needed. It’s hard to imagine my trajectory in hydrogeology without his mentorship. I am also deeply indebted to the exceptional scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who opened doors of opportunity early in my career. Notably, Rob Striegl introduced me to the Yukon River Basin in Alaska and western Canada, sparking my interest in permafrost hydrology as a vital complement to northern studies on carbon cycling. This opening paved the way for the work recognized in this nomination.
Reflecting on the papers honored by the O.E. Meinzer Award throughout its rich 60-year history, two key observations come to mind. First, there has been substantial expansion in the field of hydrogeology, with intentional integration of elements from adjacent disciplines. Second, author lists have grown considerably, a change inherently linked to the first. In the award’s early years, sole-authored publications were the norm, with the first seven awards recognizing foundational works by individual scientists. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that author lists expanded to include three or more contributors, and now, over the past two decades, such multi-authored publications outnumber single-authored ones 10:1. This marks a significant shift.
While I hold deep appreciation for our early leaders who laid the groundwork in hydrogeology through independent scholarship, I am equally grateful for the move toward multidisciplinary science. My work in anticipating the hydrologic effects of climate change in cold regions has certainly benefited from an all-hands-on deck effort! We are striving to unravel the complex interactions between water and carbon cycling in some of the most remote and data-scarce terrestrial regions of the world, which are also among the most dynamic. The transient nature of frozen ground complicates the already intricate challenge of 3-D permafrost characterization, presenting a moving target for hydrogeological analysis. Tackling these issues has required collaboration with experts in geophysics, biogeochemistry, remote sensing, and physics-based modeling. To that end, I am grateful to my cold region USGS colleagues for their unique perspectives in weaving this all together: Burke Minsley, David Rey, Kim Wickland, Josh Koch, Marty Briggs, Neal Pastick, and Cliff Voss, to name a few. I also thank academic partners Barret Kurylyk and Kamini Singa for sharing their insights as well as some outstanding students and postdocs. These collaborations—along with many others too numerous to list in this brief statement—have been instrumental in piecing together the implications of thaw-induced hydrogeological changes on northern lakes, rivers, and the permafrost carbon feedback to climate.
Finally, a special thanks to my husband, Tristan, and our daughters, Kempley and Freya, who bring joy and balance to my life. Accepting the Meinzer Award is an extraordinary honor, and in a year marked by challenges to research and education, it holds even greater meaning for me.