Daniel Richter is Professor of Soils and Forest Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Richter’s research and teaching links soils with ecosystems and the wider environment, most recently Earth scientists’ Critical Zone. He focuses on how humanity is transforming Earth’s soils from natural to human-natural systems, specifically how land-uses alter soil processes and properties on time scales of decades, centuries, and millennia. He is an active member of the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s Working Group on the Anthropocene. Richter has written in the peer-reviewed literature about all of these projects, and in November 2014 his soils research at the Calhoun and his soils teaching were featured in Science magazine.