It is with great sadness that we report that longtime Bureau of Economic Geology researcher Bill White has passed away. Bill played a huge role in building the Bureau’s coastal reputation from the 1970's through the 2000's, particularly in wetlands distribution and change over time, all while being notably modest and unassuming.
“I recall Bill with great fondness from my early years as Bureau Director,” said Scott W. Tinker. “He was a calm and thoughtful presence, and I always enjoyed our conversations.”
Colleague and Bureau senior research scientist Jeff Paine remembers, “Bill was the principal author of all of the Bureau’s Submerged Lands atlases and a really wonderful, kind, generous, and soft-spoken person.”
Bill was with the Bureau for over 30 years. During his long and productive career, he was best known for his investigations of the status and trends of wetlands in major bay-estuary-lagoon systems, studies of submerged coastal lands of Texas in which benthic sediments were mapped and characterized, studies of faulting and subsidence and their impacts on marshes, and investigations of fluvial-deltaic systems in which wetland sedimentation rates were measured and correlated with rates of relative sea-level rise.
Please join all of us at the Bureau in remembering a thoughtful and dedicated researcher whose work had tangible impact: Bill White.
