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Friday Evening Lecture Series
06/29/07
"The Ice is Burning: Rapid Climate and Ecosystem Change on the Antarctic Peninsula"
Hugh Ducklow, MBL
Introduction by Gary Borisy, MBL
Lecture Abstract:
Ecosystems supply essential services human civilization requires to maintain a healthy and secure existence on the planet. Over the next century, as the planet warms by 2-6°C, ecosystems will change in ways we cannot predict or adequately mitigate. Polar regions are warming most rapidly, and the relative simplicity of polar ecosystems makes them good models for increasing our understanding of the changes to come. The marine ecosystem west of the Antarctic Peninsula has already changed in significant ways: glaciers are receding and sea ice extent and duration have declined as winter temperatures have increased sharply. Ice-loving seabirds and mammals have undergone steep population reductions in response to changes in food availability. At the same time, ice-avoiding animals from lower latitudes have invaded the region. The polar marine ecosystem is retreating south as the subantarctic maritime climate migrates poleward driven by anthropogenic climate change.
Hugh Ducklow joined the MBL in May 2007 as the Director of the Ecosystems Center. He was previously the Glucksman Professor of Marine Science at The College of William and Mary School of Marine Sciences and Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS). Dr. Ducklow is a marine ecologist who studies plankton dynamics and biogeochemistry and works regularly at the Palmer Station in Antarctica where he is principal investigator of the Palmer Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research Project. His research centers on the interactions between climate change and ecosystem function, especially on the Antarctic Peninsula, a region that is warming especially rapidly. Dr. Ducklow has also conducted research in the North Atlantic, subtropical North Pacific, equatorial Pacific, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Southern Ocean, Great Barrier Reef, Caribbean, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Hudson River, and Chesapeake Bay.
Dr. Ducklow received an A.B. with a concentration in history and science from Harvard College, an A.M. in environmental biology from Harvard University, and. a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Harvard University. Dr. Ducklow is a member of numerous national and international organizations, panels, and societies and has served on a number of National Academy of Sciences panels. He chaired the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study; was a member of the scientific committee for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme; and advisor to the NATO Science for Stability Project in the Black Sea.
Dr. Ducklow was the biology editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research from 1991 to 1994 and has been on the editorial boards of such journals as Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Global Biogeochemical Cycles. He is currently on the editorial board of Microbial Ecology and Aquatic Microbial Foodwebs.
Gary G. Borisy will introduce Dr. Ducklow. Dr. Borisy became the MBL’s13th Director and 3rd CEO in 2006. He came to the MBL from Northwestern University where he was Associate Vice President for Research and the Leslie B. Arey Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology in the Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his B.S. in biochemistry and his Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Chicago. After serving a postdoctoral fellowship in H. E. Huxley's Laboratory of Molecular Biology at the MRC in Cambridge, England, he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He spent 32 years at Madison, rising through the professional ranks to Chairman of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Perlman-Bascom Professor of Life Sciences, before moving to Northwestern in 2000. Dr. Borisy is the author of more than 200 papers and the editor of two books and has received numerous professional honors throughout his career, including an NIH MERIT Award and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology (2003) and received the Carl Zeiss Award in 2005 from the German Society for Cell Biology. He currently is a member of the Steering Committee and Chair of the Distinguished Advisory Board for the Encyclopedia of Life project, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. He is also a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the biotech company CombinatoRx.
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