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

Career History and Highlights:Dr. Larsen was named Associate Director for Water in 2008 and is responsible for USGS water-related research and activities to provide reliable, impartial, timely information that is needed to understand the Nation's water resources. Prior to this duty, he was the Chief Scientist for Hydrology and led the USGS National Research Program in hydrology. From 2000 to 2003 he was the USGS Caribbean District Chief and supervised USGS water resources programs in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. During that period 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.

Dr. Larsen was the Luquillo, Puerto Rico, Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) project chief from 1990 to 2000. Prior to that he was a project chief on a USGS study of landslide hazards in eastern Puerto Rico. Dr. Larsen began his USGS career in 1977 with the Branch of Pacific and Arctic Marine Geology, Geologic Division, Menlo Park, California, where he served as a physical science technician in a study of natural hazards to petroleum development in the Northern Bering Sea, Alaska. He is currently the Chair of the U.S. National Committee for the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme and is the author of 67 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.