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Banquet
Speaker
Dr.
William J. Bond
Professor, Department of Botany
University of Cape Town, South Africa
"Fitting
fire into global ecology"
The
textbooks tell us that global biome distribution is largely determined
by climate with local modification by soils. However large areas
of the globe support far too few trees for their climate potential
to grow woody biomass. They include some of the most frequently
burnt areas on earth. I will discuss recent evidence for fire as
a primary determinant of these ‘open’ ecosystems, their
evolutionary origins and conflicting ideas on when, where and why
fire became important in terrestrial ecosystems.
Featured
Speakers
Dr.
Richard Alley - Dr. Tim Barnett
Dr.
Richard Alley
Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences
Penn State University
"Preparing
to be surprised:
Causes and consequences of abrupt climate change"
Richard Alley
is a Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University in
State College, Pennsylvania. He earned Bachelor's (1980) and Master's
(1983) degrees in Geology from Ohio State University, and earned
his Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1987).
He studies ice cores -- samples of ice that record Earth's past
climate. His research focuses on abrupt climate change, glaciers,
ice sheet collapse, and sea level change.
Dr. Alley has
spent several years in Antarctica and Greenland, obtaining ice cores
from which he has been interpreting past climate change. The implications
of past climatic shifts and rapid climate change for wildland fire
management are significant. What would happen if the climate of
Boston became that of Atlanta, within a ten-year period? This would
certainly make our concepts of reference condition obsolete, as
well as our budgeting for fire planning based on recent expenditures.
Dr.
Tim Barnett
Research
Marine Physicist
Climate Research Division
Scripp’s Institute of Oceanography
San Diego State University
"Future
Climate of Planet Earth: A Sneak Preview"
Dr. Tim Barnett
investigates the physics of climate change and long-range climate
forecasting, focusing his research on greenhouse gases, ocean current
effects on climate, and climate forecast model development. He is
internationally recognized for developing methods for seasonal climate
prediction and detection of global warming signals. Past work has
included prediction of El Nino and La Nina events, their effects
on floods and droughts, and biological consequences, such as effects
on fisheries of warmer ocean temperatures. His recent work compares
increasing ocean temperatures with predictions from global climate
models, showing a compelling relationship with human activity. Dr.
Barnett will describe different scales of climatic variability,
how global warming might affect them, how soon significant changes
may occur, and what this might do to fire climate.
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