Athens, Ga. – Judith L. Meyer, distinguished research professor emerita in the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, has been awarded the 2010 Naumann-Thienemann medal from the International Society of Limnology. The award is the highest honor that is bestowed internationally for outstanding scientific contributions to limnology, the study of bodies of fresh water. It is presented once every three years at the organization’s international congress, which was held this year in Capetown, South Africa.
“Receiving this recognition of my work from my international colleagues is a highlight of my career,” said Meyer.”The congress brought together limnologists from around the world and provided a forum for discussing and better understanding the complex water resource issues facing the planet.”
Meyer is an internationally-recognized aquatic ecologist, with a specific interest in urban rivers and streams and the role of headwater streams and riparian zones in river networks. The award recognized her contributions in these areas as well as her research on microbial food webs in stream ecosystems and her work linking science and policy.
“Judy Meyer is internationally known for her deep commitment to ecological research and her ability to translate basic science concepts into action that is needed to protect water quality,” said Alan Covich, president of the International Associate for Ecology and professor at the Odum School. “Her students also have contributed enormously to a wide range of insights that have helped to sustain rivers, especially the headwaters of watersheds where impacts of economic development are most often intensive and in need of riparian buffer protection.”
Among Meyer’s numerous honors are the 2003 Award of Excellence in Benthic Science from the North American Benthological Society, the Excellence in Teaching Award from the UGA Institute of Ecology (now the Odum School of Ecology) in 2005 and the Creative Research Medal from UGA in 1988. She is a former president of the Ecological Society of America and was named one of thirty National Clean Water Act Heroes by the Clean Water Network in 2002. She helped found and direct the River Basin Center at UGA. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, serves on EPA’s Science Advisory Board and chairs its Ecological Processes and Effects Committee, and is a member of the Independent Science Board of California’s Delta Science Program. In April 2010, she delivered the 17th Abel Wolman Lecture at the National Academy of Sciences. Meyer currently lives on Lopez Island, Wash.