Athens, Ga. – Stephen W. Pacala, director of the Princeton Environmental Institute and the Frederick D. Petrie Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, will deliver the 26th annual Odum Lecture at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology on March 22 at 4 p.m. in the ecology auditorium. It is free and open to all.
Pacala’s lecture is entitled “From basic botany to global climate change: How competition among plants for light, water and nitrogen create both predictable pattern in the biosphere and carbon cycle feedbacks that set the magnitude of global warming.”
Pacala serves as co-director of the Princeton Carbon Mitigation Initiative, a group of ecologists, physical and biological oceanographers, and atmospheric scientists investigating issues ranging from the effects of global vegetation on climate to the large-scale measurement of natural and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The group’s mission is to find solutions to – carbon and climate problems.
Pacala’s research focuses on all aspects of the global carbon cycle. He studies community ecology and large-scale ecosystem processes and the interactions between the global biosphere and climate. He currently is developing a new model of the terrestrial biosphere to explain ecological structure and function.
Pacala’s many honors and distinctions include membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Honoring the founder of the School of Ecology, the annual Eugene P. Odum Lecture Series features speakers who address significant ecological questions in broad social and intellectual contexts. The 25 previous Odum lectures have been delivered by preeminent scholars, including biologists Gretchen Daily and Jim Brown, botanist Peter Raven, conservation ecologist Thomas Lovejoy, and then-director of the National Science Foundation Rita Colwell.
The Odum Lecture is supported in part with funding from the Eugene P. and William E. Odum Endowment, along with contributors Terry L. and Gary W. Barrett.
For more information about the Odum School of Ecology, see www.ecology.uga.edu/.
