Ecology for a small planet
| When: | Tuesday, 21 June 2016 - Tuesday, 21 June 2016 |
| Where: | Braamfontein Campus East Senate Room, 2nd Floor, Senate House |
| Start time: | 17:30 |
Robert (Bob) Scholes, Distinguished Professor of Systems Ecology will discuss the ecology of a small planet in his inaugural lecture.
Humanity is encountering environmental constraints on many fronts, increasingly at regional to global scales. Climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss and collapse of fisheries are examples.
The barely 50 year old science of systems ecology is racing to develop tools and insights appropriate to the scale of the issues.
One of the key challenges is how to apply ecological knowledge derived at relatively small scales – a few hectares and a few years – to phenomena emerging over whole continents and centuries.
He will use examples from his research career, which has engaged with many of the issues outlined above, to show what progress has been made and where the future challenges lie. Scholes was one of the pioneers in investigating the ecological causes and consequences of global climate change in South Africa and internationally, including the SAFARI 2000 experimental campaign.
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