Marvin Jensen Receives EWRI Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr. Marvin E. Jensen received the EWRI Lifetime Achievement Award at the ASCE/EWRI World Water and Environment Congress, May 15–19, 2007, in Tampa, Florida. He has a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Colorado State University and has had a varied career serving as a consultant and as a government agency and university employee.

Dr. Jensen has received numerous awards including induction into the ARS-USDA Science Hall of Fame (2000). He was elected honorary member of ASCE (1988); awarded a Doctor of Science, Honoris Causa, degree at NDSU (1988); and presented ASCE’s Royce J. Tipton Award (1982), a USDA Distinguished Service Award (1983), and Irrigation Association Man of the Year Award (1983). In 1992, when he joined the National Academy of Engineering, he was recognized for his “development of improved methods for determining irrigation water requirements, and for international leadership in irrigation engineering advances.”

Dr. Jensen is a long-term member of the ASCE Irrigation and Drainage Committee and was World President of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage. He served as Soil and Water Director (1980–1982) and Technical Vice President (1983–1986) of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers. He was lead author on ASCE Manual 70, addressing Evapotranspiration and Irrigation Water Requirements (1990).

He was a national program leader for USDA-ARS and director of the Snake River Conservation Research Center. He was the U.S. Agency for International Development Liaison Officer to the International Irrigation Management Institute in Sri Lanka (1990–1995). As a consultant, he worked for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Florida Atlantic University, California Imperial Irrigation District, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. He also served as Director of the Colorado Institute for Irrigation Management at Colorado State University.

He was instrumental in analyzing flows in the Colorado River and aiding the Colorado River Authority to apportion flows among the irrigation projects in southern California. He is responsible for many modern developments in real-time analysis of water requirements for irrigation, and his computer models have enable scientific irrigation water scheduling in the United States.