Carl F. Jordan

Jordan is Professor Emeritus, Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia.

Carl F. Jordan
Academic background
Alma mater	Rutgers University

Jordan graduated with a B.Sc. from the University of Michigan in 1958. From 1958 to 1962 he served in the U.S. Navy as a Combat Information Center Officer. In 1962, he enrolled in graduate school at Rutgers University and received his M.Sc. in Plant Ecology in 1964. He acquired his Ph.D. in 1966.

Jordan joined Howard Odum in an Atomic Energy Commission project in Puerto Rico in 1966 and applied the cycling concept to the dynamics of radioactive isotopes in the rain forest, for which he was awarded the Ecological Society of America’s Mercer award. In 1969, Jordan moved to Argonne National Laboratory where he continued to study radioactive pollution from nuclear power plants around Lake Michigan. In 1974, he led a project for the University of Georgia near San Carlos de Río Negro in the Amazon Region of Venezuela. During this time he focused on determining how forests of the Amazon survived on the nutrient-poor soils and could even flourish and support shifting cultivation. His research showed that nutrients from decaying organic matter on the forest floor recycled directly back into the roots of living trees. As long as the cycle was intact, the forest flourished, but destruction by agriculture or grazing cut the cycle and destroyed productive capacity.

In 1980, he returned to the University of Georgia. He began taking graduate students, while continuing his research in San Carlos, and expanding it to Brazil, Ecuador, and Thailand. Most notable projects were studies in Brazil of the Jari Plantation in Brazil, a pulp plantation of hundreds of square miles, and rehabilitation of the forests around the Carajas mines in central Amazonia. The primary concentration in all these studies was the importance of preserving the soil organic matter to keep the nutrient cycle intact and functioning.

In 1993, Jordan acquired a farm near Athens Georgia that had once been part of a pre-Civil cotton plantation and began research on more sustainable ways to manage organic agriculture. He originated the first University course in Georgia on organic farming, and opened the farm to tours and classes interested in sustainable agriculture. By 2017, more than 20,000 students had toured the farm. Jordan retired as Professor Emeritus in 2009.

• Sigma Xi

• 1973: Mercer Award, of the Ecological Society of America
• 2008: Purpose Prize Fellow
• 2011: Conservationist of the Year Award Oconee River Soil & Water Conservation District