Climate Change Institute Presenting Seminar Series

The University of Maine Climate Change Institute is presenting this fall a series of three mini symposia about the connection between agriculture and climate. The symposia will explore issues from the early emergence of agriculture through modern regional responses to an evolving climate, leading to a discussion of climate-related challenges facing agriculture and society in the next 50 years.

Seminar 1, “Emergence of Agriculture in a Changing Climate,” will begin at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5, at 57 Stodder Hall. Keynote speakers include Andrew Moore of the Archaeological Institute of America and Rochester Institute of Technology and Bruce Smith and Melinda Zeder of the National Museum of Natural History, the Climate Change Institute and the UMaine Department of Anthropology.

Panel members will be George Denton and Kirk Maasch of the Climate Change Institute and UMaine’s School of Earth and Climate Science and Eric Gallandt of UMaine’s Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences. Dan Sandweiss of the Department of Anthropology and the Climate Change Institute, and dean and associate provost for graduate studies, is the faculty coordinator.

Seminar 2, “Weather and Climate in Agriculture: Annual to Decadal,” will be held at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 7, followed by Seminar 3, “Feeding 9 Billion People in a Future Changing Climate,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 12. Seminars 2 and 3 will also be held in Stodder 57.

To see the speakers and panelists for the entire series, go to the Climate Change Institute website.

The seminars are open to the public, but RSVP to Betty Lee at bliqcs@maine.edu is required.

Contact: Walter Beckwith, walter.beckwith@umit.maine.edu; Jessica Bloch, (207) 581-3777 or jessica.bloch@umit.maine.edu