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William I. Woods Director, Environmental Studies Program Professor, Department of Geography Courtesy Professor, Department of Anthropology Office: 217A Lindley Hall Phone: 785-864-8992 Email: wwoods@ku.edu Office Hours: By Appointment Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1986) Vita (pdf)

I have for 37 years conducted geographic and archaeological investigations in North, Central, and South America, as well as in Europe.  The general theme of this research has been on human-environment interactions with a focus on questions of sustainability in the past.  Topics of investigation have included Abandoned Settlements, Anthropogenic Environmental Change, Cultural Landscapes, Soils and Sediments, and Traditional Settlement-Subsistence Systems. I am presently a member of research teams working with anthropogenic soils and related environmental history and prehistory in the Brazilian Amazon, Belgium, and at the UNESCO World Heritage Cahokia Mounds Site in southwestern Illinois. Another current research topic concerns carbon sequestration in soils as a potential mitigating process for land degradation and atmospheric CO2 accumulation.  An ancillary interest involves birds has an indicator of anthropogenic environmental change. Articles in Nature, Science, Science News, BioScience, and The Atlantic Monthly that discuss my work are found below.