William H. Schlesinger (born April 30, 1950) is a biogeochemist and the retired president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, an independent not-for-profit environmental research organization in Millbrook, New York.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Schlesinger has testified before U.S. House and Senate Committees on the importance of habitat preservation and the impacts of air pollution and climate change on humans and the natural environment.
His approach, philosophy, and much of his other work is summarized in a textbook, Biogeochemistry: an analysis of global change in its third edition and coauthored with Emily S. Bernhardt of Duke University, available through Academic Press/Elsevier, San Diego.
Schlesinger served as the co-principal investigator for the Jornada Basin Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) located in the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico.
The object of the study was to investigate the efficacy of carbon sequestration in forest ecosystems (vegetation and soil) in response to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration, as a means to mitigate the potential for global warming.