Kate Scow

Kate M. Scow is an American soil scientist and microbiologist whose research investigates the soil microbiome especially in contexts of agricultural soil management and the remediation of polluted environments.^[1] She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Soil Science and Microbial Ecology in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis, former director of the UC Kearney Foundation of Soil Science, and former editor-in-chief of Soil Biology and Biochemistry.^[2]

Scow is originally from Maryland, and lived in Israel and Argentina as a teenager. On a road trip across Europe with her family, she collected soil from every country she crossed.^[3] She majored in biology at Antioch College, graduating in 1973. After graduate study at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, she earned a master's degree and Ph.D. in soil science from Cornell University in 1986 and 1989 respectively. She came to the University of California, Davis in 1989.^[4]

Scow was elected as a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America in 2000. She was the 2017 Nyle Brady Frontiers in Soil Science lecturer at the meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, and the 2019 Francis E. Clark Distinguished Lecturer on Soil Biology. In 2022 she was elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering.^[2]

• Scow Soil Microbial Ecology Lab
• Kate Scow publications indexed by Google Scholar