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<p class=""><font face="times new roman, serif">The Woods Hole
Research Center (WHRC) will hold the third and final lecture of its
Environmental Tipping Points series on Thursday, October 24, at 5:30 pm, when WHRC
Senior Scientist Michael T. Coe will present <i>Food for Thought: Balancing Agriculture, Forests, and Climate</i>. Dr. Coe will discuss deforestation in
the Amazon and how it can lead to radical climate shifts that will affect
forests, crops, and hydropower.</font></p>
<p class=""><font face="times new roman, serif">Dr. Coe is an earth system scientist who specializes in
understanding how human land cover change and land management decisions affect
the energy and water cycles, and ultimately feedback to regional climate. He is
currently participating in projects based in the Brazilian Amazon and savanna
environments. He leads field research programs to collect data on how expanding
agriculture changes evaporation, soil moisture, river discharge, and
biochemical cycles. He and his colleagues combine field data with satellite
observations and earth system computer models to better understand the scale of
historical and potential future human impacts on tropical climate and
ecosystems and help develop mitigation strategies. </font></p>
<p style="margin:0in 0in 0.0001pt"><font face="times new roman, serif">Dr. Coe was co-author of a study
released last May that suggests large-scale deforestation in the Amazon could
backfire for the country's cattle ranchers and soybean growers, reducing
precipitation and increasing temperatures to the point that production falls
way behind normal for the amount of land cleared. “The whole point of the
deforesting is so that you can get agricultural production out of it,” remarked
Dr. Coe. “It surprised us that it reduced yields so much that in fact you might
as well not have done the deforestation in the first place.”</font></p>
<p class=""><font face="times new roman, serif">In 2014, Dr. Coe will be in residence as a Fulbright Scholar
at the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil, continuing his work with colleagues
there to understand how massive deforestation in the savanna regions of Brazil
may affect the climate in the coming decades.</font></p>
<p class=""><font face="times new roman, serif">Prior to working at WHRC, Dr. Coe was a scientist at the Center for
Sustainability and the Global Environment, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and
has been a visiting scientist at Lund University, Sweden, and the Max Planck
Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany. </font></p>
<p class=""><font face="times new roman, serif">The
lecture will take place at 5:30 pm in WHRC’s Harbourton Auditorium, 149 Woods
Hole Road, Falmouth, MA. There is no charge and the public is invited to attend.
Parking and seating are limited, however, and reservations are highly recommended.
To reserve, email <a href="mailto:events@whrc.org">events@whrc.org</a> or call
508-444-1517.</font></p>
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<p class=""><span style="font-size:x-small">Contact:</span><br></p><font size="1">Beth Bagley<br><a href="mailto:ebagley@whrc.org">ebagley@whrc.org</a><br>508-444-1517</font><div dir="ltr"><div><span style="border-collapse:separate;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"><font face="georgia, serif" size="1" color="#38761d"><div>
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