Dr. E. Lynn Usery was awarded University Consortium of Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Fellow status to recognize his outstanding impact on the field of GIScience as well as for his service to UCGIS. Although Lynn was formally a Research Physical Scientist, GS 15, with the United States Geological Survey, for many years he held the position of Director of the Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science. Lynn completed multiple degrees, including a BS in Geography/Chemistry from the University of Alabama, an MA from the University of Georgia, degree work in computer science from the University of Missouri-Rolla, and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. He served on the faculties in geography at the University of Wisconsin (1988-1993) and the University of Georgia (1994-2005), and also taught at the University of Missouri, Rolla. For many years, Lynn held two positions—one as a geography faculty member at the University of Georgia and another as a research scientist with the USGS. Within GIScience, Lynn’s specialties included digital cartography, remote sensing, GIS, and spatial analysis.

Dr. Usery published in the very best journals in the discipline, including Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Geoinformatica, Journal of Remote Sensing, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and Transactions in GIS. His eclectic research interests spanned from the world of map projections (“Projecting Global Datasets to Achieve Equal Areas”), to scale and resolution (“Geospatial Data Resampling and Resolution Effects on Watershed Modeling”), to spatial analysis (“Effects of sampling interval on spatial patterns and statistics of watershed nitrogen concentration”), to landscape analysis (“Landscape complexity and soil moisture variation in South Georgia, USA, for remote sensing applications”), to Issues of time (“Adding Time to GIS”), to image classification (“Automated Classification of Basic-Level Terrain Features in Digital Elevation Models”). As you can see, [as of 2010] Lynn’s quarter-of-a-century research and scholarly contributions covered nearly all aspects of our field. His work resulted in invited lectures around the globe, including Tunisia, Russia, Austria, China, and Egypt.

Some of Lynn’s projects at the USGS [around 2010 when he was made a UCGIS Fellow] included 125 Years of Topographic Mapping, Map Projections of Raster Data, Data Integration for The National Map, Modeling, Simulation, and Animation of Sea Level Rise, Generalization for The National Map, Developing an Ontology for The National Map, and Rapid Map Projection over the Web.

Professionally, Lynn served as an editor of the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Science, Director of the Auto-Carto series that he helped to re-establish after a many year gap. He also served as President of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society in 2002, was named a Fellow of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping in 2006 and was the Chair of the United States delegation to the International Cartographic Association. Not surprisingly, in addition to Lynn’s tremendous contributions to our profession and scholarship, he also made a significant contribution with his service to UCGIS. Lynn served on the UCGIS Board of Directors, Chair of the Research Committee, and was UCGIS President in 2004. He was also the co-editor of the UCGIS book, A Research Agenda for Geographic Information Science Research Agenda, published by CRC Press.

For later details on the accomplishments of Dr. Usery, see his obituary published by The International Cartographic Association 2022.