UMaine Climate Change Lecture to Focus on Maine’s Shifting Coastline
Contact: Gregory Zaro at 581-1857
PLEASE NOTE DAY CHANGE
ORONO — Joe Kelley, chair of the University of Maine’s Department of Earth Sciences and a professor in UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, will present “The Rise and Fall of the Maine Coast: People and a Drowning Shoreline” from 6:30 to 7:45 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 19, at the Bangor Public Library. Kelley’s talk is the fourth installment in the Climate Change Institute’s monthly lecture series, which is free and open to the public. Please note that the day has changed from Wednesday to Thursday for the month of February.
Kelley will discuss how Maine’s shoreline is inherently dynamic and has shifted many miles as melting glaciers have fed a rising ocean. According to Kelley, in a few, brief human generations, people have thoroughly settled on coastal Maine’s beaches and erected buildings intended to be permanent. The continuing rise in the sea — or an acceleration in the rise — has forced people to go to greater lengths and at greater cost to hold back the sea and retain their property. In this talk Kelley will consider some examples of how beach systems are now coupled with human systems, leaving little flexibility in coping with future contingencies without losing either the beaches or properties.
Kelley is a marine geologist who focuses on research problems with societal implications.He has measured changes in sea level, as well as monitored and mapped coastal egions (including the sea floor of the Gulf of Maine) with the intent of providing information to the public. Kelley worked with the Maine Geological Survey for 18 years prior to coming to the University of Maine in 1999.
The lecture series is intended to make the science of climate change accessible to a broad audience. All lectures are free and open to the public.