In a career spanning more than 4 decades, Douglas Burbank’s sustained and outstanding research contributions developed the field of quantitative tectonic geomorphology. Doug’s early-career work on glacial geomorphology and basin analysis positioned him to play a pioneering role in an emergent field focused on understanding interactions among erosion, climate, tectonics, and topography. Owing to his ability to anticipate the promise of nascent tools and to synthesize diverse data sets spanning the lithosphere to the atmosphere, Doug stood at the forefront of this field, which continues to thrive in large part due to the trail that he blazed.

Few scientists explore the globe so intrepidly as Doug. The world’s high mountains—of Asia, Europe, North and South America, and Oceania—were his intellectual playground. The more than 160 publications Doug produced span an incredible intellectual breadth: tectonics, structural geology, geodynamics, and climate. The G.K. Gilbert Award honors Doug’s contributions to geomorphology, which are equally diverse, and include insight on bedrock channel profiles, terrace generation, hydraulic geometry, and denudation rates. His papers gave us terms that are now part of the lexicon of our field, such as threshold hillslopes and the glacial buzz saw. Doug counts among his colleagues international collaborators who were part of all of his research teams, many talented postdocs, and 36 graduate students, for which he was an outstanding mentor. His leadership took many forms, from directing the Institute for Crustal Studies at the University of California, Santa Barabara, service on numerous national-level steering committees, and his role as a scientific ambassador, as demonstrated by a long list of visiting professorships and named lectures. Doug was also strongly involved in initiatives that produced global-scale topographic and precipitation data that continue to yield dividends not only for geomorphology, but also for the broader Earth sciences community.

The two editions of Tectonic Geomorphology, coauthored with Bob Anderson, are clearly written and masterfully illustrated books that not only provide a gateway to the field, but also provide a road map for determining what methods are likely to provide the most fruitful answers to questions that span wide ranges of time and space. One can say without hesitation that Doug indeed wrote the book on tectonic geomorphology.

In closing, Douglas Burbank is a highly deserving recipient of the G.K. Gilbert Award for teaching us how surface processes, climate, tectonics, and topography interact.

—Isaac Larsen, University of Massachusetts Amherst

I am deeply honored and surprised to receive this award and to be added to a cadre of geomorphologic trailblazers whom I greatly admire. I was fortunate to collaborate with truly innovative scientists from the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America over the past decades. These international collaborators played critical roles, by both adding prescient geologic insights and orchestrating our foreign research programs. I owe a special debt to Dartmouth College, which accepted me to begin geologic studies as a 22-year-old “special student” with an undergraduate literature degree. My initial goal of becoming a high school Earth science teacher morphed dramatically as I was introduced to the beguiling pull of novel geologic research and discovered I might actually contribute to that knowledge. Rather soon I tried to discard prior theories and instead to focus on unraveling the key characteristics of the local landscapes and the processes that likely shaped them. I was very lucky both to have numerous talented collaborators and to have started my research when the digital age was exploding around us: satellite imagery and digital topography at ever increasing resolution, miniaturized sensors, and new dating techniques to derive precise ages and long-term rock-cooling histories. These advances underpinned insights on landscape evolution at decadal to million-year timescales. Notably, they provided a critical temporal framework in which to conceptualize landscape evolution and the roles of time, tectonics, climate, and surface processes in shaping landscapes of both the past and present. I want especially to thank Rachel, my wife of 51 years, who tolerated prolonged absences and also moved, often with our two daughters, to MIT, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as spending many summers in the Alps and Pyrenees, where skilled local geologists introduced me to key unresolved problems, provided critical support for our collaborative research, and brought interpretations and insights that underpinned whatever success we achieved. Such broad, creative, international collaboration will undoubtedly underpin future insights that impel us forward. —Douglas Burbank, University of California, Santa Barbara