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Matthew Larsen
Associate Director, Water, USGS
Hi-res | Water

Responsibilities: Dr. Larsen is responsible for all water-related research and activities at the USGS.

Career History and Highlights: Dr. Larsen became Associate Director for Water in June 2008. Since 2005, he had been Chief Scientist for Hydrology after having been in a USGS headquarters staff position since 2003. As Chief Scientist, he led the USGS National Research Program in hydrology. He had been the USGS Caribbean District Chief and supervised USGS water resources programs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands since 2000. That same year he also served as a coordinator and researcher on a USGS international mission that responded to the December 1999 landslide and flashflood disaster in Venezuela.

He was the Luquillo, Puerto Rico, Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) project chief from 1990 to 2000. He served as a physical science technician and participated in a study of natural hazards to petroleum development in the Northern Bering Sea, Alaska, and worked for the San Francisco Department of Public Health from 1981 until 1987, when he was hired by the USGS Water Resources Division in Puerto Rico, where he served as project chief on a study of landslide hazards in eastern Puerto Rico.

He began his USGS career in 1977 with the Branch of Pacific and Arctic Marine Geology, Geologic Division, Menlo Park, Calif.

He is also the Chair of the U.S. National Committee for the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme and is the author of 64 scientific reports and journal articles.

Education: Dr. Larsen earned a bachelor's in Geology from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and a doctorate in Geography at the University of Colorado-Boulder.