David Foster, senior lecturer on biology and director of the Harvard Forest, will speak at an event on October 19 for alumni who are Friends of Harvard Magazine. In a special gallery talk at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Foster will lead guests through a new permanent exhibit that explores the ecology of New England forests and their response to human activity.
To attend the event, join the Friends by October 12 and then write to rsvpfriends@harvardmag.com.
The Harvard Forest was featured in an October 1 New York Times article on the future of forests. The article described the efforts of Harvard researchers to track human effects on forests, and noted that "the re-growing forests of the Eastern United States are among the most important carbon sponges in the world." The world's trees absorb an amount of carbon equal to the emissions from all cars and trucks worldwide, but are under stress from threats that include deforestation (the article explores a proposal in which the world's wealthy countries would pay poorer countries to conserve their forests) and the effects of climate change (forests in British Columbia have been devastated by pine beetles, the article said, now that temperatures no longer grow cold enough in the winter to kill off the pests).
