William deBuys

William deBuys works as a writer and conservationist whose books examine landscape, environmental change, and the history of the Southwest. A Great Aridness, published by Oxford University Press in 2011, considers how climate change may reshape water, ecosystems, and human communities across the region. The book received the Western History Association's award for the best book on the Southwest. DeBuys has lived and worked in New Mexico for decades, combining research with practical conservation. His earlier River of Traps, created with photographer Alex Harris, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times notable book. He has also taught documentary studies and received Guggenheim and Lyndhurst fellowships. In A Great Aridness, that long engagement with place supports an account that connects scientific evidence with lived regional history, making environmental pressures legible through both natural systems and the communities that depend upon them.