Melting polar regions discussed Thursday at Tahoe environmental center

By Heather Segale
A lecture that explores climate change and the melting polar regions will be discussed Thursday, Sept. 15 at the Lake Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences at Incline Village.
Our Melting Polar Regions: Where Life on Earth is Changing will feature Professor Warwick F. Vincent of the Center for Northern Studies (CEN), Laval University, Quebec City, Canada. A special introduction will be done by renowned limnologist Dr. Charles Goldman. A reception and no-host bar begins at 5:30 p.m. with the program at 6 p.m at room 106 inside the center, located at 291 Country Club Drive. A $5 donation is requested.

The Arctic and parts of Antarctica are currently warming much faster than the rest of the world, and this trend is expected to accelerate over the course of the 21st century. Already there are ecological signs of change in both polar regions, with alterations of habitat, species distribution and food webs. This talk addresses the questions: how are Earth’s polar ecosystems changing, and toward what new state?
Professor Warwick Vincent is known internationally for his research on polar lakes, rivers and coastal seas, and the responses at the base of their food webs to environmental change. Originally from New Zealand, he did his PhD on the deep-water plankton of Lake Tahoe, as a student of Professor Charles R. Goldman at the University of California at Davis. He worked as a marine and freshwater research scientist in New Zealand and as Field Director for UC Davis at Lake Titicaca, Peru. He moved to Quebec City, Canada in 1990, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Aquatic Ecosystem Studies at Laval University and is Director of the Centre for Northern Studies (CEN: Centre d'études nordiques). A past president of Canada's National Antarctic Committee and a founding member of the Canadian interdisciplinary research network ArcticNet, he has earned several honors for his contributions to research and education, including the Canadian Rigler Prize in Limnology.
About the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center
The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center presents monthly lectures on science topics and organizes various educational programs including the Youth Science Institute, Science Expo, and Children’s Environmental Science Day. The Tahoe Environmental Research Center is dedicated to research, education and public outreach on lakes and their surrounding watersheds and airsheds. Lake ecosystems include the physical, biogeochemical and human environments, and the interactions among them. The center is committed to providing objective scientific information for restoration and sustainable use of the Lake Tahoe Basin.
— Writer Heather Segale is an education and outreach coordinator with the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. She can be reached at hmsegale@ucdavis.edu.