Alton C. Byers

Alton C. Byers is a mountain geographer, conservationist, and mountaineer specializing in applied research, high altitude ecosystems, glacier hazards, and implementation of integrated conservation and development programs in the Himalayas, Andes, and East African Highlands. He has published widely on a range of scientific and popular topics, and is an author and co-editor of Mountain Geography: Human and Physical Dimensions (University of California Press at Berkeley, 2013).

Following receipt of his PhD from the Department of Geography at CU Boulder in 1987, he accepted a two-year position as Co-Manager of the Ruhengeri Resource Analysis and Management (RRAM) project in Ruhengeri Prefecture, Rwanda, volunteering as Scientific Advisor to the late Dian Fossey’s Karasoke Research Center. Following this he was hired by the then-Woodlands Mountain Institute to assist in the design, fundraising, and co-management of the new Makalu-Barun National Park and Conservation Area in eastern Nepal, where he lived for two years (1993-95) in a Nepali village with his young family. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1995, he established, funded, and worked as Director of the Andean Program with a base of operations in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru, turning the program over to a Peruvian national in 1997 who has managed the project ever since. This period of his career corresponded with a growing interest in alpine conservation and restoration, particularly in tourist-impacted regions of the Himalayas and Andes, where he combined applied research with community awareness building to form several local Alpine Conservation Councils in Nepal and Peru that remain effective to this day. He became Director of Appalachian Programs in 1998, developing a range of local conservation, mountain education, and teacher training programs, including the School for Mountain Studies that regularly took undergraduates on field courses to the Mt. Everest region of Nepal and Cordilleras Blanca and Huayhuash in Peru.

In the 2000s, Byers added climate change impacts on high mountain environments to his ongoing portfolio of alpine research and conservation, landscape change, and glacial lake management and risk reduction interests, funding and hosting three international, field-based climate change workshops in Nepal and Peru between 2009 and 2013. Between 2012 and 2016 her served as Co-Manager of the USAID-funded High Mountains Adaptation Partnership (HiMAP) in Nepal and Peru, developed new approaches that to integrate the results of glacial lake ourburst flood research directly into local community adaptation plans. In 2015 he joined the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado at Boulder as Faculty Research Scientist. Between 2015 and 2019 he served as Co-PI of a National Science Foundation award titled “Science-driven, community-based approaches to reducing glacial lake outburst flood risk in the Nepal Himalayas,” working on a range of glacial lake outburst flood projects throughout highland Nepal. Between 2021 and 2022 he served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. In 2022 he spent six months in the Kanchenjunga region of Nepal as a Fulbright Research Scholar studying alpine ecosystems and glacier hazards, and in November 2024 was a Fulbright Specialist at Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan teaching mountain geography and applied research skills.

Honors and Awards

Fulbright Specialist November 2024, Hokkaido University, Japan teaching graduate level mountain geography and applied research courses.

Fulbright Scholar Research Award 2021-2022, 6 months (June-November 2022) of field work on contemporary impacts on alpine ecosystems in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area, eastern Nepal.

2021-2022 Menakka and Essel Bailey ’66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.

Honorary Member, Nepal Geographical Society, April 2018.

Rolex Award for Enterprise Finalist, Geneva, Switzerland, April 2016. Proposed Project: “An Inventory of Nepal’s Dangerous Glacial Lakes.”

Fulbright Specialist, Tribhuvan University, Central Department of Environmental Science, February-March 2016.

Career highlights and research featured in Ives, J.D. 2013. Sustainable Mountain Development. Kathmandu: Jagadamba Press.

Hongu glacial lake NGS Weekend interview (2010) featured in National Geographic Learning for a higher-ed environmental science course, August 2012.

Personal profile featured in the 2012 National Geographic Society book, “Geology and the Environment,” July 2012.

Keynote speaker at the May 6 2012 NGS Everest Gala Speakers Series.

Featured as NGS “Explorer of the Week” December 2012
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/12/10/explorer-of-the-week-alton-byers/
Invited Speaker, National Geographic Society's Explorers Symposium, Washington, DC, 7-12 June 2010.

Visiting Scientist, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Kathmandu, Nepal, 2007-2008.

Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal, Presented by Peter Hillary, University House, Melbourne, Australia, March 2007.

David Brower Award for Conservation, American Alpine Club, February 2006.

Nominee and finalist, Cyrus R. Vance Award for International Education in West Virginia, Charleston, West Virginia, 17 November, 2004.

Finalist, 2004 National Wetlands Awards Program, Washington, D.C., May, 2004.

Distinguished Career Award, Association of American Geographers, Mountain Geography Specialty Group, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March, 2004.

Nominee and finalist, Rolex Awards for Enterprise, May 2002.

Ecosystem Stewardship Award for the Blister Swamp Conservation and Restoration Project, The Nature Conservancy, West Virginia Chapter, May 2000.

NDFL Foreign Language and Areas Studies Fellowship, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, 1977-79.