Regents’ Professor & Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences;
Professor, School of Sustainability

B. L. Turner II took his B.A. and M.A. degrees in geography from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968 and 1969 respectively, and his Ph.D. in geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974. At ASU he is a Regents' Professor and the Gilbert F. White Professor of Environment and Society. Turner came to ASU after 28 years in the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, where he was Higgins Professor of Environment and Society, served as Director of that School for more than decade, and helped to create and administer the George Perkins Marsh Institute, which engages a range of human-environment problems. He previously held appointments at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Professor Turner is currently engaged in land change science focused especially on deforestation and sustainability in the southern Yucatan.

Turner examines human-environment relationships from the ancient Maya to contemporary sustainability science. He is a recipient of Distinguished Research Honors from the Association of American Geographers (1995) and the Centenary Medal, Royal Scottish Geographical Society (1996), among other honors. He is former Guggenheim Fellow (1981) and Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1994). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, and the inaugural class of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences in 2008.

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