Plant Science Seminar
Dr. Grace Brush, Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday October 11 at 4:00 p.m. in PLSC 1130
Dr. Brush is on the faculty in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and is an eminent scholar of the history and paleohistory of the Chesapeake Bay. Her research has yielded insights into links between terrestrial land use changes and sedimentation and biology of the Bay. See some of her publications here:
https://engineering.jhu.edu/ehe/faculty/grace-s-brush/
Her seminar title and abstract are as follows:
"The pre-Colonial and post-Colonial Chesapeake environment”
Impacts of climate change and land use on the Chesapeake ecosystem are recorded in sediments deposited in the Bay since it became an estuarine system some 10,000 years ago. These surrogate records show the effect of non-human related climate events such as the retreat of the glaciers 10,000 years ago on forest composition and sediment accumulation throughout the watershed as the river system changed to an estuarine system. Changes on the land, brought about by deforestation, draining of the land, changing agriculture, conversion of large areas of land to hard surfaces in post-colonial time resulted in a four to tenfold increase in the accumulation of materials including sediments and chemicals from fertilizers into Bay waters, contributing to a change from bottom dwelling communities to a living system restricted to the oxygenated upper waters.
Dr. Grace Brush, Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Thursday October 11 at 4:00 p.m. in PLSC 1130
Dr. Brush is on the faculty in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and is an eminent scholar of the history and paleohistory of the Chesapeake Bay. Her research has yielded insights into links between terrestrial land use changes and sedimentation and biology of the Bay. See some of her publications here:
https://engineering.jhu.edu/ehe/faculty/grace-s-brush/
Her seminar title and abstract are as follows:
"The pre-Colonial and post-Colonial Chesapeake environment”
Impacts of climate change and land use on the Chesapeake ecosystem are recorded in sediments deposited in the Bay since it became an estuarine system some 10,000 years ago. These surrogate records show the effect of non-human related climate events such as the retreat of the glaciers 10,000 years ago on forest composition and sediment accumulation throughout the watershed as the river system changed to an estuarine system. Changes on the land, brought about by deforestation, draining of the land, changing agriculture, conversion of large areas of land to hard surfaces in post-colonial time resulted in a four to tenfold increase in the accumulation of materials including sediments and chemicals from fertilizers into Bay waters, contributing to a change from bottom dwelling communities to a living system restricted to the oxygenated upper waters.