Joanne Logan
The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society will present a program on global warming and climate change on Thursday in Oak Ridge.
The program, titled “It’s all in the Timing: Impacts of Global Warming on Ecosystems and Phenology,” is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, January 19, in the City Room at Roane State Community College.
It will be presented by Joanne Logan, who is an associate professor at the University of Tennessee and a renowned expert on the subject, a press release said. Logan is an associate professor in the UT Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science. She has studied applied and agricultural climatology for 30 years, and she directs the undergraduate program in environmental and soil siences, the press release said.
Logan is expected to discuss global warming and the impact of climate change on managed systems such as agricultural lands, forests, impacts on humans, sea level rise, Arctic sea melt, and severe weather such as hurricanes and droughts, the press release said. Logan will also discuss other factors that are already threatening various species.
“There are fewer headlines about the impacts to the natural world that cover two thirds of the land mass of our planet,” Logan said in the press release. “Numerous species are already at risk due to other environmental stressors. It’s been reported that it will take only a small amount of warming to push many organisms into areas they have never been before, an especially serious problem for animals that cannot regulate their body temperatures such as reptiles and amphibians. Such changes are also likely to disrupt the phenology, the cyclic and seasonal phenomena such as blooming or hatching of many organisms.”
Logan will also summarize recent research that has been conducted on turtles, butterflies, and other species threatened by asynchrony; a timing mismatch between organisms and their food source or hosts. Also addressed will be the role of humans in advertising such disasters in the natural world by interventions such as species relocation.
Besides teaching classes in GIS, Environmental Climatology, Waters and Civilizations, Gardening for Life, and Professional Development, Logan manages the Tennessee Climate Services website, which provides weather and climate data to various clienteles across the state. Recently, Logan traveled to the Dominican Republic to study the impacts of climate change on that Caribbean nation, the press release said.
The Thursday program is a free program offered by the University of Tennessee Arboretum Society. To learn more about this lecture or the UT Arboretum Society, go to www.utarboretumsociety.org. For more information on the program, call (865) 483-3571.
Celebrating 52 years in 2017, this program is one of many lectures and activities that will be offered this year by the UT Arboretum Society. The program is cosponsored by the UT Forest Resources AgResearch and Education Center.
The Forest Resources AgResearch and Education Center, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014, is one of 10 outdoor laboratories located throughout the state as part of the UT AgResearch system. AgResearch is a division of the UT Institute of Agriculture. The Institute of Agriculture also provides instruction, research, and public service through the UT College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, the UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch, and UT Extension offices, with locations in every county in the state.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
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