Talk of the Towns 5/12/21: “Landscape of Change”

Producer/Host: Ron Beard

Landscape of Change (a collaboration between MDI Historical Society, Schoodic Institute, Acadia National Park, MDI Biological Laboratory, College of the Atlantic and A Climate to Thrive)

-What are we up against in terms of climate change? What are impacts we are already seeing here in Maine? What are the long-term trends?
-What is the story of The Champlain Society (Harvard students of natural history conducted research and kept logbooks from the summers of 1880-1882)?
-What do these logbooks tell us about what they observed and specifically about climate change? What other historical records are available to us to help us understand climate change?
-What are current ways in which first-hand observational data is being encouraged, collected, analyzed? How can maps using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) being used to share this information?
-What results do you hope for… what do you hope people will do with the information they gain from Landscape of Change? What might we learn about the “resilience” we will need to adapt to climate change?

How can listeners learn more and get involved?

Guests:
Catherine Schmidt, Schoodic Institute
Lawson Wulsin, A Climate to Thrive
Raney Bench, Mount Desert Island Historical Society

About the host:
Ron Beard is producer and host of Talk of the Towns, which first aired on WERU in 1993 as part of his community building work as an Extension professor with University of Maine Cooperative Extension and Sea Grant. He took all the journalism courses he could fit in while an undergraduate student in wildlife management and served as an intern with Maine Public Television nightly newscast in the early 1970s. Ron is an adjunct faculty member at College of the Atlantic, teaching courses on community development. Ron served on the Bar Harbor Town Council for six years and is currently board chair for the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, where he has lived since 1975. Look for him on the Allagash River in June, and whenever he can get away, in the highlands of Scotland where he was fortunate to spend two sabbaticals.

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