10/20/2022
Jim Omernik, the powerhouse behind ecoregion mapping, and from the Driftless Region, passed over this summer.
Born in 1937, Jim was from Rice Lake, Spooner and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire with a Bachelor of Science in Geography in 1960. His graduate studies in geography and cartography at the University of Kansas, 1960-1961 shaped his approach to geographic analysis. He worked as a Cartographic Technician with the Defense Mapping Agency in Washington, DC from 1961-1963, and then as a Terrain Military Geographer for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Arlington, Virginia from 1963-1972.
In 1972, Jim and family moved from Virginia to Corvallis, Oregon, where he began a job as a geographer with the newly created U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. At the EPA, he led in the design and development of national and regional maps of stream nutrient concentrations attributable to nonpoint sources of pollution, total alkalinity of surface waters to assess sensitivity to acid rain, total phosphorus regions for lakes in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, and a hierarchical framework of ecological regions. He was a major participant in a NAFTA-related project of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation to map ecological regions of North America, and was a member of the National Interagency Technical Team to develop a common framework of ecological regions for the conterminous U.S..
In other words, Jim, a Driftless lad, laid important foundations for ecoregional, bioregional work that is so important for our work in the Driftless. For more, see
View James Michael Omernik's obituary, send flowers and sign the guestbook.
