Ellen E. Wohl


Ellen E. Wohl is an American fluvial geomorphologist. She is professor of geology with the Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University.

Biography

Wohl earned her Ph.D. in geosciences from the University of Arizona in 1988. She holds a B.S. in geology from Arizona State University.
She has contributed many scholarly articles to academic journals, including Geomorphology, Journal of Geology, Ecological Applications, Water Resources Bulletin, and Geological Society of America Bulletin. She has served as Associate Editor for Journal of Hydrology, Geological Society of America Bulletin, and Water Research. In 2009, she received the Kirk Bryan Award for research excellence.
Wohl has earned praise for writing for general readers, in prose that "stands with the best of contemporary nature writing." Among her numerous books written for broad audiences are Virtual Rivers: Lessons from the Mountain Rivers of the Colorado Front Range, which documents the history of land-use patterns on the Front Range and their wide-ranging effects on river ecosystems; Disconnected Rivers: Linking Rivers to Landscapes, which offers a primer on the physical, chemical, and biological processes of rivers and a discussion of historical changes to rivers and efforts to rehabilitate them; Of Rock and Rivers: Seeking a Sense of Place in the American West, a memoir of her life in the American West and a lyrical natural history; Transient Landscapes: Insights on a Changing Planet, which reveals the constantly metamorphosing global landscape; Rhythms of Change in Rocky Mountain National Park, which traces environmental changes in the park over the course of a year; and Saving the Dammed: Why We Need Beaver-Modified Ecosystems, which takes readers through twelve months at a beaver meadow in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, exploring how beavers change river valleys and how the decline in beaver populations has altered river ecosystems.