[SEMCO] WHRC Lecture: 24 October, 5:30 pm

[Allison White]

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 *Food for
Thought: Balancing Agriculture, Forests, and Climate*.  Dr. Coe will
discuss deforestation in the Amazon and how it can lead to radical climate
shifts that will affect forests, crops, and hydropower.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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 events at whrc.org or call 508-444-1517.

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Contact:
Beth Bagley
ebagley at whrc.org
508-444-1517
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