For further MBL News and Media Information, contact the MBL Communications Office at (508) 289-7423 or e-mail us at comm@mbl.edu .

Harvard Ecologist and Author to Present Falmouth Forum Lecture, March 3

Woods Hole, MA—Harvard University ecologist David Foster will present the next lecture in the 2005-2006 Falmouth Forum series on Friday, March 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the MBL’s (Marine Biological Laboratory’s) Lillie Auditorium, MBL Street, Woods Hole. The lecture is sponsored by the MBL Associates and is free and open to the public.

Foster’s lecture will focus on the processes that have shaped the Cape and Islands landscape. He will also discuss some of the ways conservationists and land managers may conserve species and habitats to restore these environments.

Foster teaches courses on forest ecology and environmental change at Harvard University, where he has been a faculty member in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology since 1983. He is also Director of the Harvard Forest, a 3000-acre ecological research and educational institute in central Massachusetts that is one of 26 sites in the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program.

Foster received his Ph.D. in ecology from the University of Minnesota and has conducted research in the boreal forests of Labrador, Sweden and Norway and the forests of Puerto Rico, the Yucatan, and Patagonia in addition to his primary research on landscape dynamics in New England. His interests focus on understanding the changes in forest ecosystems that result from human and natural disturbance processes and applying these results to the conservation and management of natural resources. Foster has authored several books including Thoreau’s Country – Journey through a Transformed Landscape, and New England Forests in Time.

Admission to this Falmouth Forum presentation is free and open to the public. A buffet dinner is available before the lecture at 6:00 p.m. in the Swope Center located near the auditorium. Dinner tickets are $20 and must be purchased in advance at either Eight Cousins Children’s Books, Main Street, Falmouth, or at the MBL’s Communications Office in the Candle House in Woods Hole. Dinner seats are limited and tickets are only available until they sell out or until 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 28. For more information, contact the MBL Communications Office at: (508) 289-7423 or comm@mbl.edu

The MBL Associates support the scientific mission of the MBL through their volunteer efforts to raise funds, and by their gifts to the Annual Fund, assist MBL programs and promote the MBL in the community. Over the years the Associates have taken on a wide range of projects, including providing fellowships for young scientists, supporting the MBL/WHOI Library, renovating the Lillie Auditorium, and landscaping the Whitman-Loeb quadrangle on the Woods Hole campus. The Associates also help bring the work of the Laboratory to a broader public by sponsoring the Falmouth Forum Series and operating the MBL Gift Shop. Membership is open to anyone with an interest in the Laboratory.

The final lectures in the Falmouth Forum 2005-2006 season are below.

March 17 - "Four Ways to Tell the Story of the Buddha." – David Eckel, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Boston University

April 7 - "Corruption in Our Governments: What We Can and Should Do About It" – Professor Clyde McKee, Trinity College, Hartford, CT

The MBL is an international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Western Hemisphere. For more information, visit www.mbl.edu.