Dean Maraldo

Dean Maraldo

  • Adjunct Professor, Geography

Education

PhD, Geography, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2025.

MS, Natural Resources and Environmental Science, University of Illinois, Urbana, 2019

MA, Public Policy and Administration, Northwestern University, 2010

BA, Geological Science, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1991

Teaching Schedule

Course Num Title
GEOG 120-402 Our Physical Environment

Research Interests

  • Glacial geomorphology
  • Indicators of climate change in the Arctic and coastal Alaska
  • Water security and environmental justice

Advisor

Advisor: Choi

Biographical Sketch

Dean Maraldo is a physical geographer whose research examines the response of Arctic glaciers, lake ice, and vegetation to a warming climate, with a focus on the Russian High Arctic and the coastal glaciers of Prince William Sound, Alaska. His work draws on remote sensing, satellite imagery analysis, and field-based geologic methods to track long-term environmental change in cold regions.

He also brings over two decades of experience as an environmental enforcement official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he supervised water enforcement programs and served on federal response teams for the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, the Flint water crisis, and the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. This background in environmental policy and regulatory practice shapes his teaching, connecting physical earth processes to the institutional and human systems that respond to them.