After graduating from İstanbul University Faculty of Forestry in 1993, Assoc. Dr. Mehmet ÖZALP passed the exam opened by the Ministry of National Education in 1994 and went to the United States in 1995 by securing scholarship. He completed his graduate studies at Mississippi State University (USA) in 1997 and his doctorate at Clemson University in 2003.

In March 2004, he started to work as a faculty member in the Department of Forestry Engineering, Watershed Management Department of the Faculty of Forestry within Artvin Çoruh University.

In addition to his position as the Deputy Director of the School between 2007 and 2008 at Artvin Vocational School within the body of Artvin Çoruh University, he has been working as the Head of the Forest Engineering Department, Watershed Management Department at the Faculty of Forestry since 2009. In addition, he worked as the Erasmus Institutional Coordinator of Artvin Çoruh University between 2012 and 2020, and the Director of Foreign Relations Application and Research Center of Artvin Çoruh University between 2017 and 2020.

His areas of expertise include watershed management and planning, hydrological processes in forested basins, natural water resources, ecology of wetlands (flooded forests), water quality in streams, land use changes, soil protection (fight against erosion), combating drought, etc. In addition, he teaches a large number of courses covering the research topics listed above in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs.

In addition to numerous scientific publications published in international and national journals, he also contributed to the successful completion of numerous research projects that he conducted and/or worked as a researcher.

He is currently working as a faculty member in the Forest Engineering Department, Watershed Management Department of the Faculty of Forestry in Artvin Çoruh University.

He has been a member of the board of since 2005 in the Yeşil Artvin Derneği, which has been fighting against the Cerattepe mining operation in Artvin.