Joel Johnson, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at UT Austin
Dr. Joel Johnson is an Associate Professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences at UT Austin, and a geomorphologist who focuses on fluvial processes. He got his PhD from MIT in 2007, and has been at UT since 2009. His research focuses on quantifying active surface processes and relating them to the evolution of topography over both short and long timescales. Research topics include quantifying how climate gradients and bedrock properties influence topographic development, understanding controls on tsunami and storm surge deposition, and constraining feedbacks between sediment transport rates, sediment sorting, vegetation and the evolution of bed roughness in mountain rivers. In addition, he has taught an undergraduate course in geoethics for several years, and enjoys discussing questions of values on which reasonable people can disagree.