Tom Lovejoy, Healy Hamilton, and Mark Anderson. Moderated by Stuart Pimm.
‘Biodiversity in a Changing Climate: Three Perspectives’
The Carolina Theatre, 309 W. Morgan Street, Durham, NC 27701
Do you have questions about how to best care for our planet in a changing climate? Join notable scientists and conservationists for a keynote lecture and panel discussion around the theme of “Biodiversity in a Changing Climate.” Tom Lovejoy (George Mason University) will begin the evening with the James and Cathleen Stone Distinguished Lectureship in Biodiversity, entitled “A Wild Solution for Climate Change.” This lecture will address why climate change matters for biological diversity and how living systems can help address climate change. Dr. Lovejoy’s keynote will be followed by comments from Healy Hamilton (NatureServe) and Mark Anderson (The Nature Conservancy), and a panel discussion moderated by Stuart Pimm (Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University).
Thomas E. Lovejoy was elected University Professor at George Mason in March 2010. He also serves as Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation. From 2008-2013 he was the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and was President 2002-2008. An ecologist who has worked in the Brazilian Amazon since 1965, he works on the interface of science and environmental policy. Starting in the 1970s he helped bring attention to the issue of tropical deforestation and in 1980 published the first estimate of global extinction rates (in the Global 2000 Report to the President). He conceived the idea for the long term study on forest fragmentation in the Amazon (started in 1978) which is the largest experiment in landscape ecology, the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project (also known as the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project). He also coined the term “biological diversity”, originated the concept of debt-for-nature swaps and has worked on the interaction between climate change and biodiversity for more than 20 years. He is the founder of the public television series “Nature”. In the past, he served as the Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation, as the Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for the Environment for the Latin American region for the World Bank, as the Assistant Secretary for Environmental and External Affairs for the Smithsonian Institution, and as Executive Vice President of World Wildlife Fund-US. In 2002 he was awarded the The Tyler Prize and in 2009 he was the winner of BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology Category. In 2012 he received the Blue Planet Prize. He has served on advisory councils in the Reagan, George H.W, Bush, and Clinton administrations. In 2009 he was appointed Conservation Fellow by the National Geographic. He chairs the Scientific and Technical Panel for the Global Environment Facility which provides funding related to the international environmental conventions. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. (biology) from Yale University.
Dr. Healy Hamilton is currently Chief Scientist and Vice President for Conservation Science at NatureServe. She is a biodiversity scientist with broad interests in the evolution and conservation of the diversity of life. Her current research focus is global change biology, with an emphasis on forecasting the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems for natural resource management and conservation. Dr. Hamilton is committed to public understanding of global change, and explores data visualization approaches to improve ecological literacy. In her spare time, she studies the taxonomy, evolution and conservation genetics of seahorses and their relatives. She obtained her masters degree at Yale University and her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, and for both degrees she conducted extensive fieldwork in South America. Dr. Hamilton is President of the Society for Conservation GIS and serves on the Science Committee of the National Park Service Advisory Board. She is a Switzer Foundation Environmental Leadership grantee and a former U.S. Fulbright Scholar.
Dr. Mark Anderson is Director of Conservation Science for The Nature Conservancy’s Eastern US Division. Mark provides science leadership, ecological analysis, and landscape assessments for conservation efforts across eighteen states in the Nature Conservancy’s Eastern Division. He holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from University of New Hampshire and has worked as an ecologist for over 29 years, 24 with The Conservancy. In addition to leading regional-scale ecological assessments, Mark has published widely on biodiversity conservation, forest dynamics, and climate change resilience, and was a co-author of the National Vegetation Classification. His current research interests include ecological resilience, disturbance processes, geophysical landscape properties, and seafloor mapping. He manages a team of six scientists specializing in landscape ecology, aquatic biology, marine spatial planning, and regional data management.
Professor Stuart Leonard Pimm is the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He studies present day extinctions and what can be done to prevent them. Pimm wrote the acclaimed assessment of the human impact to the planet: The World According to Pimm: a Scientist Audits the Earth in 2001. Pimm directs SavingSpecies, a 501c3 non-profit that restores degraded lands in areas of exceptional tropical biodiversity.His international honours include the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2010), the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Society for Conservation Biology’s Edward T. LaRoe III Memorial Award (2006), and the William Proctor Prize for Scientific Achievement in 2007 from Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Pimm received his BSc degree from Oxford University in 1971 and his PhD from New Mexico State University in 1974.