Global Warming at Walden PondHosted by College of Arts and Sciences and College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Association
Richard Primack, a Boston University College of Arts and Sciences professor of biology, speaks as part of the College of Arts and Sciences Discoveries series. Using the journals of New England naturalist Henry David Thoreau as a comparative guide, Primack and his students, particularly Abraham Miller-Rushing (GRS’07), have been learning for the past five years how climate change and global warming are influencing the behavior of plants and wildlife in the Boston area.
In the 1850s, Primack says, Thoreau constructed a calendar of nature for Concord, Mass. He recorded the first flowering times of more than 300 plant species and the first spring arrival times of dozens of species of migratory birds. Through their research, Primack and his students have learned that Walden Pond is thawing earlier than in Thoreau’s time, Concord plants are flowering about eight days earlier, and migratory birds are arriving earlier.
“These changes are direct indications that global warming is affecting the natural world, even in New England,” Primack says. “And if global warming continues at this rate, it will have severe consequences on American agriculture, forestry, and horticulture. The sea levels will rise and flood coastal areas, temperatures will increase, and tropical diseases will spread.
”Primack urges everyone to take action. “Start keeping a calendar of when things flower in your yard and keep track of temperature changes and when birds arrives,” he says. “Global warming is a serious subject that must be addressed.”
About the speaker:
A biology professor at the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences, Richard Primack has been studying climate change in Concord, Mass., for the past five years. His method of using Henry David Thoreau’s notations of plant flowering cycles and bird migration patterns as a basis for research into the local effects of global climate change earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. He is the author of several books, including two leading textbooks on conservation biology, Essentials of Conservation Biology and A Primer of Conservation Biology. He is the president of the Association for Tropical Biology and the editor-in-chief of the journal Biological Conservation.
