Rabel J. Burdge is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he held tenure appointments from 1976 to 1996 in the Institute for Environmental Studies and the Departments of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (Rural Sociology), Leisure Studies (now Recreation, Sport and Tourism) and Urban and Regional Planning.

He was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Huxley College of the Environment at Western Washington University in Bellingham, where he taught courses on environmental sociology and social impact assessment from 1996-2012.

Educated at Penn State (Ph.D.-1965) and Ohio State University (B.S.-1959 and M.S.-1961), Burdge has also served on the faculties of the University of Kentucky (Lexington), 1968-1976; and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, 1965-68 (active military duty with final rank of Captain).

Since 1986 he has been an Honorary Professor in the School of Australian Environmental Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia where he received the visiting scholar award. In 1984 he was a Resident Professor, Department of Western Sociology, University of Wageningen, the Agricultural University of The Netherlands. Burdge spent the spring term of 2002 as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Planning and Landscape and the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Centre, University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

In 2003, Burdge edited a double issue of the international journal, Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, Volume 21 (2&3) titled, “The Practice of Social Impact Assessment” and completed the 3rd edition of his two SIA textbooks: The Concepts, Process and Methods of Social Impact Assessment (translated and published in Chinese in 2011, ISBN: 978-7-5111-0612-4) and A Community Guide to Social Impact Assessment, both published in 2004 (later revised in 2015) by the Social Ecology Press of the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR).

He has written over 200 scholarly articles and papers on social change in rural communities, natural resource and environmental issues, needs assessment surveys, the use of public involvement in the resource decision making process, the social and economic impacts of development, the sitting of hazardous and conventional waste facilities, as well as natural resource recreation management.

In addition to the above books, Burdge is author of Coping with Change: an Interdisciplinary
Assessment of the Lake Shelbyville Reservoir, and co-author of Social Change in Rural Societies: A Rural Sociology Textbook, 2nd and 3rd Editions. He is former editor of the Journal of Leisure Research and founding co-editor of both Leisure Sciences: an Interdisciplinary Journal and Society and Natural Resources: An International Journal.

From 1994-2000 Burdge was Executive Director and Treasurer of the Rural Sociological Society (RSS) and Editor of The Rural Sociologist. He was the 1988 recipient of the RSS Natural Resources Research Award for contributions to the sociology of natural resources. In August of 1996, he was named Distinguished Rural Sociologist, the highest honor given by the Rural Sociological Society.

In 1990 he was elected the President of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) and in 1994 received from IAIA the “Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Award” for outstanding contributions to the field of impact assessment. He gave the keynote address for the 26th annual meeting (June, 2007) of the International Association for Impact Assessment in Seoul, Korea and it was later published as Rabel J Burdge, “The Focus of Impact Assessment (And IAIA) Must Now Shift to Global Climate Change!!” Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 28 (8 November, 2008) pp. 618-622.

Recent consultancies include: 2001–preparation of the Social Impact Assessment manual for the Bureau of Reclamation, US Department of Interior; 2002–international expert for UNEP-Malaysia on the preparation of SIA guidelines; 2003–preparation of Principles and Guidelines for Social Impact Assessment for the US National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA).

Annually, Burdge gives training courses on social impact assessment for such professional organizations as the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA, where he is a certified instructor) and the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR) where he received the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Rural Sociological Society (RSS). He has also given training courses on social impact assessment for a variety of private sector companies and organizations.

Recent social impact assessment (SIA) projects include; the assessment of the building of housing for low-income Hispanic farm workers in a lower middle class area; the sitting of a large deep water port facility on Native America land; a proposal to build a multiple-housing recreation facility inside a present urban area on 85 acres of pristine forested land and the baseline study for a proposed diamond mine in Aboriginal Territory of Canada’s Northwest Territory.

In Memorium

Early Saturday morning, April 7, 2018, University of Wisconsin Professor Emeritus Donald Reed Field passed away. He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Nancy H. Field, children Peggy, Andrew, and Donald Jr., six grandchildren, and a large extended family. Beyond the joys these family members brought to Nan and Don, they are a lasting signal of the core traits this couple instilled in each person they came into contact with – honesty, love, commitment, faith, and will to move forward. Thankfully, Don’s ability to impart such traits was not restricted to bloodlines – it extended to a legion of students, colleagues, and indirect progeny. All who studied with, worked alongside, or otherwise were blessed to interact with him felt his grace, and profited from his wisdom.

Professor Field served in many capacities and roles throughout his distinguished career, including as an Assistant Professor at South Dakota State University and then at the University of Washington (where he was promoted through the ranks to Professor), Chief Scientist Pacific Northwest Region of the National Park Service (where he also served as the agency’s first Senior Scientist in Sociology), and Professor of Forest Resource Management at Oregon State University. He spent the last 23 years of his career at the University of Wisconsin where he served as Associate Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Director of the School of Natural Resources, and Professor of Rural Sociology and Forest and Wildlife Ecology. Taken together, these positions provide a penetrating glimpse into Don’s creative life-space – he traversed the intersections between the natural sciences and social sciences as had few before him. More importantly, he erected some of the first bridges to creating a transdisciplinary framework for addressing the many wicked problems assailing the natural resource-human interface.

Don Field’s work in natural resource sociology is foundational. His research findings appeared in many of the leading journals published today, and along with his numerous books, book chapters, and research monographs remain core to current work in the areas of leisure studies, rural sociology, and natural resource social science. The enduring importance of his contributions is in part reflected by the numerous awards he received over the course of his career, including a Fulbright Fellowship to Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, the Department of Interior’s Meritorious Service Award, the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Award for Conservation and Recreation Research from the National Recreation and Park Association, the George Hartzog Award from the National Park Service, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association for Society and Natural Resources, the Award of Merit from the Natural Resources Research Group of the Rural Sociological Society, the Distinguished Rural Sociologist Award from the Rural Sociological Society, the Outstanding Alumnus Award from Penn State, and election as a Fellow of the Academy of Leisure Sciences.

Field’s level of engagement with and contributions to the creation of professional networks and organizations is unparalleled. He served as an elected Council member, Secretary, and Vice-President with the Rural Sociological Society. His creativity and sense of purpose led him to actively pursue the development of new outlets and organizations that brought natural resource and social scientists together. He served for six years as co-editor of the recreation resource-based scholarly journal Leisure Sciences. He organized the first International Symposium on Society and Resource Management in 1986, and continued to play a lead role in nurturing and organizing the ISSRM symposia for the next quarter-century. Based on research papers from the first Symposium he launched Society and Natural Resources in 1988, and continued as the journal’s co-editor in chief until 2003. In 2001 he led the creation of a new professional association, the International Association for Society and Natural Resources, and served as IASNR’s founding Executive Director from 2002 to 2005.

Don Field’s life was devoted to bringing people with different agendas together to address the pressing issues facing our nations’ natural resources. He infused a passion among all he worked with to add to and apply social science knowledge in ways that would enhance both natural resource conditions and social well-being. He will never be far from our hearts, or our minds.

Laura Verbrugge  – University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Claudia Benham – James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Nabin Baral – University of Washington, Seattle, USA
Joan Brehm – Illinois State University, Normal, IL, USA
Megha Budruk – Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Stuart Carlton – Texas A&M University – Galveston, Galveston, TX, USA
Michael Carolan – Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Timothy Collins – University of El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA
Peter Cronkleton – Center for International Forestry Research, Lima, Peru
Bethany Cutts – North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
Ashley Dayer – Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Jun He – Yunnan University, Kunming, China
Gordon Hickey – McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Trevor Hill – University of KwaZulu-Natal, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Gerard Kyle – Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
Mark Lubell – University of California, Davis, CA, USA
Richard D. Margerum – University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Thomas Measham – Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Cassandra Mosely – University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Fiona Nunan – University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
Peggy Petrzelka – Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA   
Victoria Reyes-Garcia – Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Camilla Sandström – Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Michael L Schoon – Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA
Kate Sherren – Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
Michael Sorice – Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Marc Stern – Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA
Bruce Taylor – Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Brisbane, Australia
Gladman Thondhlana – Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Lei Zhang – Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

Emmanuel Matthew Akpabio – University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria

Iosif Botetzagias – University of the Aegean, Lesbos, Greece
Paolo Omar Cerutti – Center for International Forestry Research, Nairobi,
Kenya 
Alan P. Diduck – University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada
Marla Emery – U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station,
Burlington, VT, USA
Polly J. Ericksen – International Livestock Research Institute,
Sustainable Livestock Systems, Nairobi, Kenya
David Flores – U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station,
Fort Collins, CO, USA
Michael S. Hand – U.S. Forest Service Northern Regional Office,
Missoula, MT, USA
Michael Hughes – Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
Michiel Köhne – Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
Zhao Ma – Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Sango Mahanty – The Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia
Stephanie Malin – Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

Sandy Marquart-Pyatt – Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI,
USA
Max Nielsen-Pincus – Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

Anja Nygren – University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Christine Overdevest – University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Bishnu H. Pandit – Nepal Agroforestry Foundation, Kathmandu, Nepal

John R. Parkins – University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Bob Powell – Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA
Hua Qin – University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
Leigh Raymond – Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA
Clare Ryan – University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Erika Washburn – University of Wisconsin – Extension, Washburn, WI,
USA
Nigel Watson- University of Lancaster, Lancaster, England
Rachel P. Wynberg – University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Chenyang Xiao – American University, Washington, D.C., USA

Wiebren Boonstra – Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm, Sweden
Mollie Chapman – University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Lain (Melanie) Dare – University of Canberra, Bruce, Australia
Peter Edwards – Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Wellington, New Zealand
Darrick Evensen – University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Giuseppe Feola – Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Klara Fischer – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
Ritwick Ghosh – New York University, New York City, NY, USA
Anne G. Short Gianotti – Boston University, Boston, MA, USA
Troy Hall – Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Emily Huff – Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Md. Saidul Islam – Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Dawn Kotowicz – The University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, RI, USA
William D. Leach – University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Chieh-Lu Li – National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan
Kreg Lindberg – Oregon State University, Bend, OR, USA
John Chung-En Liu – Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Ben Marley – Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Piotr Matczak – Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
Candace May – South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA
Brian Mayer – University of Arizona, Tuscan, AZ, USA
Lorenzo Pellegrini – Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Georgia Piggot – Stockholm Environment Institute, Seattle, WA, USA
Archi Rastogi – Universalia Management Group, Quebec, Canada
Sonya Sachdeva – USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, Evanston, IL, USA
Matthew Sanderson – Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
Rachel Schattman – USDA Forest Service, Northeast Climate Hub, Burlington, VT, USA
Chelsea Schelly – Michigan Technical University, Houghton, MI, USA
Renzo Taddei – Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Thomas Thaler – University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Rebecca (Becky) Thomas – Slippery Rock University, PA, USA
Julie Urquhart – University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, United Kingdom
Christopher Wynveen – Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA
Xiao Xiao – Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA