The Marston Lecture in Geography was established in 2015 by geography alumnus Richard A. Marston (M.S. '76, Ph.D. '80). The Marston Lecture was created to bring national and international scholars who have made important contributions in the areas of geographic inquiry to Oregon State.
Fall 2026 Marston Lecture
Wednesday, November 18
Location: OSU Campus and Zoom
Title: Beyond Yellowstone: Working Lands, Wildlife, and Conservation
Drew Bennett, Ph.D. '15
MacMillan Professor of Practice, University of Wyoming
Talk summary: The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is defined in the public imagination by its national parks and the bison, wolves and bears that call it home — yet the private, working lands surrounding these anchors represent both the greatest vulnerability and the greatest opportunity for lasting conservation in the region. Drawing on surveys, interviews and geospatial analysis, Bennett will describe how emerging partnerships among private landowners, agencies and conservation organizations sustain landscape connectivity and seasonal habitats that wildlife depend on beyond park boundaries. Ultimately, Bennett asks what it takes to make conservation work on lands where livelihoods depend on the land itself — and what this means for the iconic wildlife that move through geographies historically overlooked in conservation.
Speaker Bio: Drew Bennett is the Whitney MacMillan Professor of Practice in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, where he leads the MacMillan Private Lands Stewardship Program. He earned his Ph.D. in Geography from Oregon State University in 2015. As a human-environment geographer, his research explores how innovative governance arrangements and conservation finance can simultaneously support rural livelihoods and preserve critical natural resources across the American West. Earlier in his career, Drew worked with The Nature Conservancy on a cattle ranch in eastern Colorado and with the Mesa Land Trust in western Colorado, grounding his scholarship in the realities of working land conservation. He recently served as a Fulbright Scholar and a Visiting Research Scientist at CSIRO in Canberra, Australia, where he investigated natural capital investment approaches delivering environmental, economic, and social co-benefits.
Past Marston Lectures
- 2025 - Mark Giordano, Ph.D. '02 and Meredith Giordano, Ph.D. '02 - International and local perspectives on water and food: How geography shaped the professional trajectories of an accountant and an economist
- 2024 - Brooke Marston, M.S. '14 - Geography, Intelligence, and Foreign Policy: A State Department Geographer’s Perspective
- 2023 (November) - Dawn Wright - The Dive of a Lifetime to the Deepest Place on Earth
- 2023 (May) - William Moseley - When agronomy flirts with markets, gender and nutrition: A political ecology of the new green revolution for Africa and women’s food security in Burkina Faso; Beth Tellman - Understanding flood risk from space: Opportunities to adapt to changing risk and catalyze climate justice; Cascade Tuholske - Linking food security, climate change, and urbanization across Africa
- 2022 - Julia Corbett - New directions for communicating the climate crisis, and Jenna Tilt - Resilience re-imagined: Why equity matters
- 2019 - Jane Lubchenco - Tackling wicked environmental problems with complex-adaptive-systems thinking
- 2018 - Simon Donner - Living islands: Coping with sea-level rise in Kiribati and the Pacific islands
- 2016 - Alexander B. Murphy - The integration struggle in Europe: Geographical considerations
- 2015 - Richard A. Marston - Physical geography and geographic information science in environmental management: Past lessons and prospects for the future
Richard A. Marston
Richard A. Marston is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geography at Kansas State University. He served as the 102nd President of the Association of American Geographers from 2005-06. He is an Emeritus Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Geomorphology. The American Institute of Hydrology first certified Marston as Professional Hydrologist #488 in 1984. Marston is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geographical Society, Explorers Club, Geological Society of America, and Royal Geographical Society. The American Association of Geographers awarded him with Distinguished Service Honors (2003), the Barry Bishop Distinguished Career Award in Mountain Geography (2007), and the Mel Marcus Distinguished Career Award in Geomorphology (2016).