During the Dust Bowl and his tenure at the University of Oklahoma, Sears wrote Deserts on the March, one of the first books to communicate ecological principles to the general public.
[4] Also during the late 1920s and 1930s, Sears pioneered the study of fossil pollen as a cue to past vegetation and climate in the United States.
[2] One of his early students, Phyllis Draper, published the first American contribution to this developing field.
Eighteen issues were mimeographed and distributed, ultimately, to more than 200 pollen researchers and interested scientists in North America and Europe.
Williams that this new science be named “palynology,” a term for this new field which was ultimately adopted by his colleagues.
In the mid 1960s, Sears retired to Taos, New Mexico, where he participated on local boards and committees, “taught dozens of local youngsters to play violin,” and “continued his work to make this planet a better place.” He taught a course in environmental biology in 1977 at Fort Burgwin, New Mexico, a research facility 10 miles from Taos[7] which is owned by Southern Methodist University.