- About the Lecture
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About the Lecture
Wanted: Citizen-observers to document springtime arrivals and departures of common plants and animals. Richard Primack and Abraham Miller-Rushing hope to enlist your help in a project aimed at gathering data on the impact of climate change. In conversation with Museum audience members, they describe their work to date, and what they need from volunteers.
Signs of global warming aren’t turning up just at the polar ice caps. When daffodils bloom in January in New England, it’s clear the climate is off kilter more generally. Accurate data from specific regions on when flowers bloom, or when birds migrate to their breeding grounds, says Primack, will help scientists draw an accurate and detailed picture of how warming is altering local ecosystems.
Primack and Miller-Rushing have begun to pinpoint climate impact patterns in the Northeastern U.S., and they have some historical help: the journals of Henry David Thoreau, who observed when more than 600 species of plants flowered in Concord, MA. Thoreau’s diaries and tables help demonstrate not only a drastic loss of local plant species, but a wholesale shift in the flowering dates of surviving plants. For instance, the highbush blueberry blooms almost a month earlier than in Thoreau’s time. Primack and Miller-Rushing also came across a treasure trove of 19th-century cemetery photos, enabling stark contrasts with our own times: trees not yet in leaf on Memorial Day in the last century.
In Europe, where data’s been gathered for years, some insect-catching birds are in serious decline, as they migrate to their spring breeding grounds out of phase with their prey. Primack’s initial U.S. data reveals similar alterations. The blackpoll warbler, for instance, which migrates long distances, “has no idea what the temperatures are here,” and shows up too early from its wintering grounds.
Primack and Miller-Rushing have launched a program to gather data from locations across New England, from the mountains of New Hampshire to the cities. They encourage all keen-eyed naturalists to respond to their questionnaires, and to develop a seasonal awareness of, among other things, when ponds and lakes thaw, when butterflies first appear, and when peepers begin their spring chorus.
Follow this link to contribute diaries or photos to the research database.
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- About the Speaker
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About the Speaker
Richard B. Primack
Professor of Conservation Biology, Boston University
Richard B. Primack has served at Boston University since 1978. He received his B.A. from Harvard University and Ph.D.in Botany from Duke University. His current research focuses on the impact of climate change on species.
In the last 30 years, he has been carrying out research in tropical forest ecology, especially in Malaysia. He was a principal investigator for the Man and Biosphere Program, coordinating research on the Maya forest of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. - About the Host
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About the Host
MIT Museum
Cutting-edge technologies, amazing holograms, and the beauty of Harold Edgerton's strobe photography entertain, educate, and enlighten at the MIT Museum. Robotics, underwater exploration, kinetic sculptures, and the variety of interactive programs and historic collections attract visitors and researchers from around the world. This unique museum recently opened the Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery featuring some of the latest work of selected research groups at MIT.
Video Player
Global Warming, Up Close and Local
- Richard B. Primack
- February 21, 2007
- Running Time: 1:09:23
