07/18/2017
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Location
Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
60 Bigelow Drive
East Boothbay
Event Type
Alaska’s Aleutian Islands exist within a remote region of the North Pacific, and for Dr. Doug Rasher, a Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, they are a perfect laboratory for his research. These subarctic islands sit at the frontier of ocean warming and acidification, and because of this they may act as a “canary in the coal mine,” a bellwether of sorts for how other areas of our oceans will be affected by climate change. For the past three years, Dr. Rasher has been working to unravel the affects climate change is having on the ecology of Aleutian kelp forests, specifically looking at a species of reef-building algae that has persisted there for millennia. Join him to discuss not just how the ecology of this remote and vast ecosystem is changing, but also how his research will help us understand the changes currently occurring within our own Gulf of Maine.
