Vale, Thomas R. 1943-

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Vale, Thomas R. 1943-

PERSONAL:

Born October 18, 1943; married; wife's name Geraldine. Education: University of California, Berkeley, A.B., 1966, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1971.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Madison, WI. Office—Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin, 550 N. Park St., Madison, WI 53706-1404. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

California State University, Hayward, 1969-73; California State University, Arcata, winter, 1971; University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor of geography, beginning 1973, then emeritus professor of geography.

WRITINGS:

GEOGRAPHY

Plants and People: Vegetation Change in North America, Association of American Geographers (Washington, DC), 1982.

(With wife, Geraldine R. Vale) U.S. 40 Today: Thirty Years of Landscape Change in America, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1983.

(Editor) Daniel B. Luten Progress against Growth: Daniel B. Luten on the American Landscape, Guilford Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Geraldine R. Vale) Western Images, Western Landscapes: Travels along U.S. 89, University of Arizona Press (Tucson, AZ), 1989.

Time and the Tuolumne Landscape: Continuity and Change in the Yosemite High Country, University of Utah Press (Salt Lake City, UT), 1994.

(Editor, with Robert C. Ostergren) Wisconsin Land and Life, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1997.

(With Geraldine R. Vale) Walking with Muir across Yosemite, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 1998.

(Introductory essayist) Nicolette Bromberg, Wisconsin Then and Now: The Wisconsin Sesquincentennial Rephotography Project, University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2001.

(Editor) Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape, Island Press (Washington, DC), 2002.

The American Wilderness: Reflections on Nature Protection in the United States, University of Virginia Press (Charlottesville, VA), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Thomas R. Vale is a professor of geography, whose research interests include: the physical geography of areas and how it affects environmental systems and weather patterns; biogeography, which includes alterations in vegetation and the impact of human activity on growth patterns, particularly in the American West; and the connection between geographical landscapes and the development of natural resources. He has written extensively on the American wilderness and the relationship between native peoples and their use of the land. His book, Walking with Muir across Yosemite, which he wrote with his wife, Geraldine, looks at the Yosemite area that was so revered by naturalist John Muir, and by so doing also attempts to understand Muir himself. They travel the route taken by Muir in his work, My First Summer in the Sierra, and include a chapter on the ongoing development of public policy as it links to the public park system. The American Wilderness: Reflections on Nature Protection in the United States looks more deeply into the ways in which the United States has attempted to protect its natural resources through public reserves and nationally protected land parcels, such as the national parks. Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape, for which Vale served as an editor, goes back to pre-European attitudes toward the land, and addresses the ways in which native people treated the landscape. Robert Engel, in a review for Environment, called the work "an interesting, thoroughly researched, and very readable account of the 'hand of man' in the American West before the arrival of Europeans."