Maine's Climate Future - What Do We Do Now?

As citizens we have often been spectators in the public political debate about climate change that typically relies on global evaluations of the climate system that are captured in the periodic reporting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, our response to a changing climate is largely local, from things we can do to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, to adaptation to a changing climate. Adaptation we are already doing every day, with more to come, regardless of whether we call it that or by another label.

In 2009, the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine led an assessment of past and future climate in Maine, and the implications for Maine people, particularly as it relates to our natural resource based economy. That work was updated in a report in 2015.

This talk highlights the findings of that report, discusses linkages between our changing climate and our environment in Maine, and strategies for evidence-based adaptation. 

Support for the Ted Exford Climate Stewards lecture series is provided by Dave & Loretta (Exford) Hoglund.

Ivan J. Fernandez is professor in the School of Forest Resources, Climate Change Institute, and School of Food and Agriculture at the University of Maine. He was made a Distinguished Maine Professor in 2007, CASE/Carnegie in Washington DC named him Professor of the Year for Maine in 2008, and was named a fellow in the Soil Science Society of America in 2010 among other awards.  He has served on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board committees in Washington DC since 2000, he currently chairs a panel of the EPA Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) that is evaluating the secondary National Ambient Air Quality Standards in the Clean Air Act for sulfur and nitrogen oxides, he represents the University of Maine in the USDA Northeast Climate Hub, and has been involved in leading the Maine’s Climate Future assessments in 2009 and 2015. He is a soil scientist by training, with a research program that focuses on the biogeochemistry of ecosystems in a changing physical and chemical climate.