COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Bradford Wilcox, a Texas A&M University department of ecosystem science and management professor, will spend the next year in Ecuador as the recipient of a Fulbright award.
"On behalf of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, I am pleased to congratulate you on your selection for a Fulbright award to Ecuador," said board chair Tom Healy in the notification letter.
"As a representative of your country in Ecuador, you will help fulfill the principal purpose of the Fulbright Program, which is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of the more than 150 countries who currently participate in the Fulbright Program," the letter stated.
Wilcox is currently on a three-month scientific exchange program in northeastern Brazil. He is collaborating with scientists from the Universidade Federal Rural de Perambuco to better understand the influence of land cover change on the water cycle. He is also teaching a graduate level course in ecohydrology and helping to advise graduate students.
His research is directed at more accurately understanding the interaction of land use and land cover on the water cycle of the high elevation grasslands in the Andes. These grasslands are extremely important as they supply clean and abundant water for much of the Andean region, Wilcox said.
"Unfortunately, they are being threatened by a number of land-use regimes, including mining, intensive agriculture and overgrazing," he said.
He will be collaborating with scientists at the University of Cuenca. In addition to research, Wilcox will be teaching and helping to advise graduate students.
The Fulbright grant is made possible through funds appropriated annually by the U.S. Congress and, in many cases, by contributions from partner countries and/or the private sector.
"Developing international understanding requires a commitment on the part of Fulbright grantees to establish open communication and long-term cooperative relationships," Healy said. "In that way, Fulbrighters enrich the educational, political, economic, social and cultural lives of countries around the world."
Wilcox developed and teaches one undergraduate course, one graduate-level course, as well as a graduate/faculty seminar. He has served as advisor to 25 master's and doctoral students and has published 165 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, proceedings and scientific abstracts, many of which appear in top-tier ecology and hydrology journals. In addition, he has made scientific presentations of his research results at more than 70 meetings, conferences and seminars.
Wilcox earned his doctorate from New Mexico State University and his bachelor's and master's degrees from Texas Tech University. He joined the Texas A&M department in 2000, after serving four years as the chief scientific officer at the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, headquartered in Brazil. He also taught watershed management at Colorado State University and conducted hydrologic research at the Northwest Watershed Research Center in Boise, Idaho and Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.