The Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn, presents “Regenerating Tropical Forests,” a lecture by Dr. Robin Chazdon, UConn Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The lecture will be held at the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History on the UConn Storrs Campus, Saturday, December 13 at 3 pm.
Tree by tree and acre by acre, the clearing of the earth’s great topical forests during the 20th century to harvest timber and establish farms, plantations, roads, and cities, caused extraordinary changes to the environment. Deforestation displaced rural populations, caused the extinction of countless plant and animal species, leads to erosion and desertification, released large amounts of previously stored carbon into the atmosphere, and diminished an ecosystems ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere, recycle nutrients, filter ground water, and regulate water flows. Today, however, deforestation rates are declining and some forests are beginning to return.
Join Dr. Robin Chazdon, the principal investigator in the new research coordination network People and Reforestation in the Tropics: a Network of Education, Research, and Synthesis and a long-term researcher on tropical forest regeneration. Learn what researchers and nonprofit organizations are doing to bring these second-growth forests back in the most successful ways possible. A book signing of Dr. Chazdon’s new book Second Growth: The Promise of Tropical Forest Regeneration in an Age of Deforestation, which reviews present and past human impacts on tropical forests, the ecology of forest regeneration, and local and global forest stewardship, will follow the talk.
This program is open to adults and children ages 8 and above. Children must be accompanied by an adult. The program is free and advanced registration is not required. To contact the Museum, visit http://www.cac.uconn.edu/mnhcurrentcalendar.html or call 860-486-4460.
Presented by the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Connecticut Archaeology Center, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn.
For more information, contact: Natural History Museum at 860.486.4460