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Friday Evening Lecture Series
07/29/11
Lillie Auditorium, 8:00 PM
“Coral Reefs: Past, Present and Future”
Nancy Knowlton, Smithsonian Institution
Introduction by Jesse Ausubel
Lecture Abstract:
At least one quarter of everything that lives in the sea lives with coral reefs – there are as many species of crabs in six square yards of reef as there are in all of Europe! These rainforests of the sea have been declined around the world, sometimes catastrophically. In the Caribbean, for example, 80% of the living coral has disappeared in the last three decades. Until recently, the primary culprits have been overfishing, pollution and disease, but more recently threats posed by invasive species, climate change, and ocean acidification are of increasing concern. Given all the doom and gloom, is there any hope for coral reefs? In remote locations, coral reefs remain healthy and are able to bounce back from destructive events. This tells us that the situation is not hopeless in the short term if we manage fishing pressure and reduce pollution. But in the long term, reducing emissions of carbon dioxide will be essential in order to ensure the future health of coral reefs.
Dr. Nancy Knowlton holds the Sant Chair in Marine Science at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where her research focuses on coral reefs and the diversity of life in the ocean. She received her BA at Harvard University, her PhD at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a NATO postdoctoral fellow. Later, she was a professor at Yale University, a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and Professor and founding Director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Past service included advisory positions with the National Geographic Society, the World Bank, and the Census of Marine Life. She currently serves on the editorial board of the Annual Review of Marine Science, the Pew Marine Fellows Advisory Committee, and the national boards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Coral Reef Alliance. She is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, winner of the Peter Benchley prize for science in the service of conservation, and author of Citizens of the Sea: Wondrous Creatures from the Census of Marine Life.
Dr. Jesse Ausubel will introduce Dr. Nancy Knowlton. Dr. Ausubel is Director of the Program for the Human Environment and Senior Research Associate at The Rockefeller University in New York City. Since 1994 Ausubel has served concurrently as a Program Director for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Census of Marine Life. Under Sloan auspices, Dr. Ausubel helped found the Census. Ausubel has authored and edited over 100 articles, reports, and books. He serves on several editorial boards, including The Journal of Industrial Ecology, and is a University Fellow of Resources for the Future and an adjunct faculty member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he has conducted ongoing studies since 1991.
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