The Global Change Center’s Distinguished Lecture series brings some of the world’s leading scholars to the Blacksburg community to discuss critical environmental and societal issues in an open forum. The GCC seeks to raise awareness about climate change and other global problems that threaten the environment and society.
Date: Friday, February 16, 2018 at 4:00 p.m.
Location: The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg
Kirk Johnson, a world-renowned paleontologist who focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs, will visit Virginia Tech on Friday, February 16.
He will give a 4 p.m. distinguished lecture, “Natural History in the Age of Humans,” at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing in the theatre’s main lobby.
Dr. Kirk Johnson is the Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He oversees more than 440 employees and a collection of more than 145 million objects—the largest natural history collection in the world.
Johnson is a paleontologist who has led expeditions that have resulted in the discovery of more than 1,400 fossil sites. His research focuses on fossil plants and the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is known for his scientific articles, popular books, museum exhibitions, documentaries, and collaborations with artists. In 2010-11, he led the excavation of an ice age site near Snowmass Village, Colorado, that recovered more than 5,400 bones of mammoths, mastodons and other ice age animals. This dig was featured in the NOVA documentary, Ice Age Death Trap, and in Johnson’s book, Digging Snowmastodon, Discovering an Ice Age World in the Colorado Rockies. His recent documentaries include the three-part NOVA series Making North America, which aired on PBS networks in November 2015, and The Great Yellowstone Thaw which premiered on PBS in June 2017.
The Lyric Theatre is located at 135 College Ave. in Blacksburg. Doors will open at 3 p.m. Metered parking is available on the street as well as in the Kent Square garage. Anyone parking on the Virginia Tech campus before 5:00 pm will need a permit. For more information, please contact The Global Change Center (540–231-5400).
Date: Friday, April 7, 2017, 4:00 p.m.
Location: The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg
The Global Change Center at Virginia Tech is pleased to welcome Brian Richter for a Distinguished Lecture at the Lyric Theatre entitled “Chasing Water in a Dynamically Changing World”.
Brian Richter has been a global leader in water science and conservation for more than 25 years. He is the President of Sustainable Waters, a global water education organization. He is also the Chief Scientist for the Water program of The Nature Conservancy, an international conservation organization, where he promotes sustainable water use and management with governments, corporations, and local communities. Brian serves as a water advisor to some of the world’s largest corporations, investment banks, and the United Nations, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on multiple occasions. He also teaches a course on Water Sustainability at the University of Virginia.
Brian has developed numerous scientific tools and methods to support river protection and restoration efforts, including the Indicators of Hydrologic Alteration software that is being used by water managers and scientists worldwide. He was featured in a BBC documentary with David Attenborough on “How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?” He has published many scientific papers on the importance of ecologically sustainable water management in international science journals, and co-authored a book with Sandra Postel entitled Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature (Island Press, 2003). His latest book, Chasing Water: A Guide for Moving from Scarcity to Sustainability, was published in 2014.
Date: April 21, 2016
Location: The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg
The Global Change Center at Virginia Tech was pleased to welcome Dr. Josh Tewksbury for a Distinguished Lecture at the Lyric Theatre entitled “Living in the Anthropocene: Science, Sustainability, and Society”.
Dr. Tewksbury is an ecologist, conservation biologist, and planetary health scientist with experience both in academia and in civil society. He is currently the Director of the Colorado Global Hub, at Future Earth; Research Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder; and Senior Scholar, School of Global Environmental Sustainability, Colorado State University.
Tewksbury was the Walker Professor of Natural History at the University of Washington, with appointments both in the department of Biology and the College of the Environment, where his work focused on major global change issues, including the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, the potential of landscape connectivity to mitigate the impacts of climate change, and the impacts of species loss on ecosystem function.
Date: September 2, 2015
Location: The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg
The Global Change Center at Virginia Tech was pleased to welcome Dr. Naomi Oreskes, Harvard historian and author, for a Distinguished Lecture at the Lyric Theatre. Her lecture, entitled “Should We Trust Science? Perspectives from the History and Philosophy of Science”, was followed by a question and answer period and book signing. The free event was coordinated by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and co-sponsored by a number of units from across campus.
Dr. Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Her research and writing focuses on understanding scientific consensus and dissent in relation to environmental science. She has received international acclaim for her 2010 book, “Merchants of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco to Global Warming,” co-authored with Erik M. Conway, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Priced, received the 2011 Watson-Davis Prize from the History of Science Society, and was recently adapted into a documentary film.
Date: March 20, 2015
Location: The Lyric Theatre in downtown Blacksburg
Dr. Michael Mann, a climate scientist and central figure in the political debate over climate change, visited Virginia Tech on March 20, 2015. His 4 p.m. lecture at the Lyric Theatre was followed by a brief question and answer session and signing of his book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.”
The free event was sponsored by the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech and the Interfaces of Global Change Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program.
Mann is a distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University, with joint appointments in the departments of geosciences and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. His research involves the use of theoretical models and observational data to better understand earth’s climate system.