Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
Malcolm Hughes
Malcolm Hughes is Regents’ Professor of Dendrochronology, and of Watershed Management, at the University of Arizona. From 1986-1999 he was Director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, a unique multidisciplinary department devoted to environmental research and teaching in the natural and social sciences. He played a leading role in the establishment of Global Change research and teaching programs at the University of Arizona, resulting in the establishment of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (1998), has been awarded visiting fellowships at Harvard University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado, and Aarhus University, Denmark, and is a Fellow of the Galileo Circle of the College of Science, University of Arizona.
Hughes’ research focuses on the nature and causes of climate variability on timescales of years to centuries, primarily as recorded by natural archives such as tree rings. He also works on placing recent and forecast climate change in the context of natural variability, and on mechanisms by which climate variability and change influence the production of wood.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in Botany and Zoology, and a Ph.D. degree in Ecology, both from Durham University, England.