The talk will be held virtually via Zoom and in-person at 107 Norman Smith Hall, UMaine.
- Virtual attendance: Complete the registration form to receive Zoom connection information.
- In-person attendance: Masks are required for all Mitchell Center talks.
Speaker: Brian McGill, Professor, Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and School of Biology and Ecology, University of Maine
Much of Maine’s economy is dependent on natural resources, whether directly through harvesting or indirectly through tourism. Global society has inadvertently committed to substantial global warming in the coming decades. This will require substantial adaptation not just from crops, trees and wildlife, but from the rural communities whose economies depend upon them. I will present ongoing efforts and preliminary results from an NSF funded research that can lead to increasing Maine and Vermont’s adaptation planning and ultimately adaptive capacity. Research to date has involved significant co-production with diverse stakeholders. Topics include models leading to near-term (policy-relevant) predictions of range shifts of crops and conservation targets in response to climate change, changing phenology (and resulting changing agricultural practices) of crops, national analysis of farmer adaptive behaviors such as crop switching, and modeling of the impact of social networks on adaptation. A web-based climate-change information tool is also being developed to put useful information about climate change into the hands of individuals.
Brian McGill is a Professor at the Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine. His research addresses how global change is impacting biodiversity. He is currently the lead investigator of an interdisciplinary grant studying adaptation to climate change in Maine and Vermont, Barracuda (Biodiversity and Rural Adaptation to Climate Change Using Data Analysis). This project involves eight faculty and three universities (UMaine, University of Maine at Augusta, University of Vermont). Stakeholders from conservation and agriculture are advising the project.