Rate My Professor Mitchel Mcclaran

Mitchel McClaran is Professor of Range Management in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at The University of Arizona, where he has served since 1986. He earned a Ph.D. in Wildland Resource Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1986, an M.S. in Range Management, and a B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources. In addition to his professorship, he holds appointments as Professor in Arid Lands Resources Sciences and Global Change graduate interdisciplinary programs and is a member of the graduate faculty. Since 2004, McClaran has been Director for Research at the Santa Rita Experimental Range, and since 2020, Director of the Arizona Experiment Station in the Division of Agriculture, Life, and Veterinary Sciences and Cooperative Extension. Previously, he directed the Experiment Station starting in 2000. His research focuses on rangeland vegetation dynamics and management, particularly in arid and semiarid grasslands, examining effects of grazing, shrub encroachment, fire, climate variability, and invasive species on plant communities, soil carbon, nitrogen cycling, and trace gas fluxes.

McClaran has authored or co-authored 120 scientific publications, including key works such as the co-edited book The Desert Grassland (1995), chapters on oak savannas and ecological time series (1999, 1995), and recent papers on hotspots of biogeochemical activity in drylands (2024, Nature Plants), vulnerability of soil organic carbon (Nature Climate Change, 2024), and soil health indicators (2023, Soil Science Society of America Journal). He has received the Fellow designation from the Society for Range Management (2014), the Outstanding Teaching Award from the Range Science and Education Council (1999), and fellowship in the Bart Cardon Academy for Teaching Excellence at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Certified as a Rangeland Manager by the State of California Board of Forestry (1996) and as a Professional in Rangeland Management by the Society for Range Management (1999), McClaran teaches courses on rangeland plant communities, wildland plants, and management. His oversight of the Santa Rita Experimental Range maintains long-term datasets essential for rangeland ecology research.