Tom Gill at Lordsburg Playa
A Biographical Sketch of Tom Gill
By Jeffrey A. Lee, Texas Tech University
Thomas E. Gill was born in 1961 and grew up in Walnut Creek, California, near San Francisco.
Both of his parents were artists and trips for his father’s hobby of landscape painting led Tom to
a love of geomorphology starting early in childhood. A self-proclaimed science nerd, he spent
much time in the local library trying to understand the scenery he saw.
At age two, Tom developed rheumatoid arthritis, which kept him in a wheelchair for most of his
childhood. Early in college, he improved enough to walk short distances, which has been the
case for most of his adult life.
He was an Atmospheric Science major at University of California, Davis, but had an equal love of
Geology and Physical Geography, earning minors in both subjects. At the time, geology was not
seen as a good fit for someone with a physical disability, but Geology Professor Eldridge Moores
saw Tom’s intellectual potential and encouraged him to follow his passion. Despite his limited
mobility, he has conducted extensive field research projects during his career.
For his PhD, also at UC Davis, Tom combined his love of all aspects of solid and atmospheric
Earth Science and joined the lab of Professor Tom Cahill to study sand and dust storms at Mono
Lake, California and this work was expanded to include Owens Lake. Thus began Tom’s career in
aeolian research. The Owen’s Lake research found him working closely with the aeolian pioneer
Dale Gillette. Both playa lakes are extensively affected by water diversions for Los Angeles,
which gave Tom’s research strong political and economic dimensions. In fact, his work was
temporarily halted due to a lawsuit where, as a graduate student, he had to turn over all his
research data and findings and testify in court.
During and after his PhD, Tom conducted air quality (mostly dust-related) research as a scientist
at the Crocker Nuclear Lab at UC Davis, which was then directed by Cahill. This was the time
when PM10 and PM2.5 were just being widely seen as human health threats and Owens Lake was
an extreme emitter of both. His time in Davis was followed by nine years in Lubbock, Texas, first
working for the US Department of Agriculture under Ted Zobeck, then Texas Tech University.
He moved to University of Texas El Paso in 2004, where he remains as Professor with a joint
appointment in Geological Sciences and Environmental Science and Engineering.
At UTEP, his courses, include ‘Earth Science’, ‘Weather and Climate’, ’Aeolian Processes’, ‘Arid
Lands’, and ‘Art and the Environment.’ He advised 22 MS and PhD students, with more ongoing.
Space limitations preclude me from delving into Tom’s passions for music, human rights, and
humor. And, of course, his hard work as an advocate for people with disabilities in the Sciences.
Not to mention is skills as a bird and butterfly watcher.
Tom is a sought-after scientist to collaborate on research projects. You can be sure that if his
name is on a paper, he spent considerable effort on both the science and the writing. His peer
reviewed publications include a total of 271 co-authors. (That’s 271 individuals with those on
multiple papers counted as one.) The old slogan for the BASF company can be modified: Tom
Gill doesn’t lead the research project. Tom Gill makes the research project you lead better. Only
some of his research areas are mentioned here.
His most cited publications are from his work in a team developing a global assessment of
major dust source regions. The best known of these studies, with nearly 3300 citations, is:
Prospero, Joseph M., Paul Ginoux, Omar Torres, Sharon E. Nicholson, and Thomas E. Gill, 2002. Environmental characterization of global sources of atmospheric soil dust identified with the
NIMBUS-7 TOMS absorbing aerosol product. Reviews of Geophysics 40: 2-01 to 2-31 (doi:
10.1029/2000RG000095).
Tom probably is best known for his work on aeolian processes acting on playa surfaces,
represented here by: Gill, Thomas E., 1996. Eolian sediments generated by anthropogenic
disturbance of playas: human impact on the geomorphic system and geomorphic impacts on
the human system. Geomorphology, 17: 207-228. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-
555X(95)00104-D
His work on aeolian health hazards, especially Valley Fever, has arguably been his major
research focus in the past decade and is shown in this article: Tong, Daniel Q., Julian XL Wang,
Thomas E. Gill, Hang Lei, and Binyu Wang, 2017. Intensified dust storm activity and Valley fever
infection in the southwestern United States. Geophysical Research Letters 44(9): 4304-4312.
https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL073524
Research on the global patterns of dust source regions is complemented by his work focusing
on dust sources in the Great Plains and Southwest of the United States and northern Mexico. A
good example is: Kandakji, Tarek, Thomas E. Gill and Jeffrey A. Lee, 2020. Identifying and characterizing
dust point sources in the southwestern United States using remote sensing and GIS. Geomorphology
353:107019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2019.107019
Finally, an historical look at the causes of dust storms in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s resulted in:
Lee, Jeffrey A., and Thomas E. Gill, 2015. Multiple causes of wind erosion in the Dust Bowl. Aeolian
Research 19(A):15-36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2015.09.002