Public Lectures

In the western United States, the annual wildfire area increased by nearly 300% over the past 40 years, mostly due to a ~10-fold increase in forest-fire extent. Fire is not inherently bad – it’s been on the continents for as long as plants, and many ecosystems depend on it – but the ongoing rapid increase in wildfire activity is nonetheless concerning. Forest fires have grown increasingly large and severe despite our best efforts to prevent ignitions and suppress spread. In this talk, Dr. Park Williams will unravel the story of why western U.S. society has lost control of wildfire after nearly eliminating it from the landscape for the better part of a century. The conclusions can guide our understanding of fire’s role on the western U.S. landscape and how we can change our ways to live sustainably with it.

Computation has fundamentally changed the way we study nature. New data collection technology, such as GPS, high-definition cameras, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), genotyping, and crowdsourcing, are generating data about the natural world that are orders of magnitude richer than any previously collected. AI can turn these data into a high-resolution information source about living organisms and the planet’s biodiversity, enabling scientific inquiry, conservation, and policy decisions. The talk will introduce a new field of science, imageomics, and present a vision and examples of AI as a trustworthy partner both in science and biodiversity conservation, discussing opportunities and challenges.

Feeding 10 billion people sustainably by 2050 while conserving nature and addressing climate change is humanity’s greatest challenge. Almost a billion people worldwide experience food insecurity, while an estimated 40% of all food produced is lost or wasted. At the same time, food and agriculture are the main drivers of biodiversity loss globally, constituting a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, with a large climate impact.

The monoculture of knowledge and scientific tradition tends to ignore, devalue, silence, and exclude multiple knowledge cultures and practices. Encouraging plurality of ways of producing, validating, and sharing knowledge supports inclusive, contextual, and actionable knowledge solutions for deepening sustainability. In this talk, Dr. Rajesh Tandon shares stories from around the world of traditional knowledge solutions in action.

How can innovations in agricultural production and distribution reduce climate-altering food system emissions? Which approaches hold genuine promise and which are more hype? In this talk, Dr. Mario Herrero, professor in the Cornell CALS Department of Global Development and director of Food Systems & Global Change, explores the opportunities and challenges of mitigating climate impacts through sustainable agriculture strategies and the implications for equity and food security in a low-emissions world.

To improve societal and environmental wellbeing, decision makers need climate information that is actionable. Actionable climate information needs to be timely; sufficiently detailed as to describe the region and processes of interest; trustworthy and truthful in acknowledging uncertainties; and policy- or decision-relevant. We have already begun to observe the transformative power of machine learning (ML) to produce actionable knowledge in weather forecasting (where we can conveniently check whether our predictions are correct). How could machine learning do the same, and more, in the context of climate change? This talk will introduce how we make climate predictions, and then describe ways in which machine learning can enable us to make more trustworthy and more detailed climate predictions, at a faster pace. We'll also explore how machine learning can provide a bridge between climate.

Today, about 3000 glaciers straddle the Equator in Latin America, East Africa, and Indonesia. Dr. Heïdi Sevestre will present her ongoing project, “The Last Tropical Glaciers,” initiated in 2019 in Colombia. Together with local glaciologist Jorge Luis Leballos and citizen science project Cumbres Blancas Colombia, they conducted several field campaigns to support the monitoring of the small tropical glaciers in the country and raise awareness of these rapidly disappearing glaciers all the way to the desk of decision makers. Today, about 3000 glaciers straddle the Equator in Latin America, East Africa, and Indonesia. Dr. Heïdi Sevestre will present her ongoing project, “The Last Tropical Glaciers,” initiated in 2019 in Colombia. Together with local glaciologist Jorge Luis Leballos and citizen science project Cumbres Blancas Colombia, they conducted several field campaigns to support the monitoring of the small tropical glaciers in the country and raise awareness of these rapidly disappearing glaciers all the way to the desk of decision makers.