West Virginia University will host a free web-based seminar on climate change and its implications for regional agriculture at 2 p.m. on April 25.
The webinar will be moderated locally by Doolarie Singh-Knights, an assistant extension professor of agricultural and resource economics in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design, an agricultural economics specialist with the WVU Extension Service and the local and regional foods scholar at the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development.
The webinar is sponsored by the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, which is directed by Stephan Goetz, a professor of agricultural and regional economics in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
“There is growing interest among those in the agricultural community about how the temperature and precipitation changes that are forecasted to occur over the next decades may affect food production in the Northeast region,” said Goetz, who will co-facilitate the webinar. “While yields for some crops may be adversely affected, new opportunities may also emerge for growing other crops that could not have been grown previously.”
This 90-minute webinar will feature scientists whose research focuses on these issues – Art DeGaetano is a professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University and is the director of the federally supported Northeast Regional Climate Center. DeGaetano, who describes his research as “applied climatology,” develops research methods and data sets that provide climatological information to decision-makers in a variety of fields.
David Fleisher is an agricultural engineer in the Agricultural Research Service branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As a member of the ARS Crop Systems and Global Change Lab, Fleisher carries out research to improve the growth, yield and quality of crops in the face of climatic changes, through increased understanding of the mechanisms controlling response and adaptation to changes in CO2, light, water, temperature and soil chemistry.
As a center scholar, Singh-Knights organized this webinar to help identify current research, teaching and extension efforts that promote practical and profitable responses to climate change challenges. She also expects the webinars to promote regional collaboration in these areas.
“We organized this webinar series as part of the Northeast Center’s efforts to help build stronger networks among land-grant and related institutions in the Northeast,” said Singh-Knights.
This webinar is the third in an occasional series organized by Singh-Knights that focuses on local and regional food systems. Previous webinars in the series are archived online.
To register for the seminar, please visit https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1954914439646796546 or contact Singh-Knights at Dosingh-knights@mail.wvu.edu.
-WVU-
dsk/4/14/14
CONTACT: Doolarie Singh-Knights, WVU Davis College and Extension Service
304.293.7606, Dosing-Knights@mail.wvu.edu
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