Andrew Warren (geographer)

In the mid 2000s Warren participated in an expedition to the Bodélé Depression, northern Chad, dubbed the "dustiest place on Earth". The team established that the region contributes substantially to global atmospheric dust due to its diatomite and mega-barchan dunes. The team also argued that dust, displaced into the upper atmosphere and widely dispersed, is a major contributor to terrestrial and oceanic nutrient budgets.

His contribution to the desertification debate has been to assert the 'social' and 'contextual' nature of desertification processes, as well as the inadequacies of monitoring techniques and broad statements about desertification in drylands up until the 1990s. This has proven controversial, but has helped shift the debate on desertification to one that recognizes dryland peoples as positive agents of change rather than destroyers of fragile ecosystems.

Warren was born in India to Scottish parents, grew up in India and Scotland, and attended the University of Aberdeen (1st, Geography, 1959) and the University of Cambridge (PhD, Geography, 1967). His doctoral research was on the Qoz region of Kordofan, Sudan, funded by the consultancy Huntings, with whom he had worked as a soil surveyor in Sind, West Pakistan after his undergraduate degree. He became a lecturer in Geography at University College London in 1964, and became Professor in 1995, retiring in 2003. He worked for short periods at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, the Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, Lund University, and the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, USA. He lives in central London and is married with two children.

Andrew Warren (born 27 October 1937 in Kalimpong, North Bengal, India) is a British physical geographer. He is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London, UK.