Using historical records to investigate the effects of climate change on plants and birds

Dr. Richard Primack, Professor at Boston University gives a lecture titled Using historical records to investigate the effects of climate change on plants and birds

Abstract

For the past 22 years, Professor Richard Primack (Boston University, USA) and his team have been using the  records of the famous environmental philosopher Henry David Thoreau from the 1850s and other Massachusetts data sources to document the earlier flowering and leafing out times of plants, the earlier flight times of butterflies, and the more variable response of migratory birds. Plants in Concord are also changing in abundance due to a warming climate. This work has now been extended to the neglected autumn season.  What would Thoreau tell us to do about global warming if he were alive today?

About the speaker
Primack is a Professor at Boston University with a specialization in plant ecology, tropical ecology, climate change biology, and conservation. He has written four widely used conservation biology textbooks; local co-authors helped to produce 38 translations with local examples. He was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Conservation and served as President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. His research has been featured in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and National Geographic. Primack shares his research in the popular book Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods.