Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to the Plants and Animals of Thoreau’s Concord

Henry David Thoreau was a climate change scientist! For the past 15 years, Professor Richard Primack (Boston University) and his team have been using Thoreau’s records from the 1850s and other Massachusetts data sources to document the earlier flowering and leafing out times of plants and the more variable response of migratory birds. Most noteworthy, plants in Concord are also changing in abundance due to a warming climate. This work has received extensive media coverage and is now being extended to the neglected autumn season. What would Thoreau tell us to do about global warming if he were alive today?

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

Richard Primack is a Professor of Biology with a specialization in plant ecology, conservation biology, tropical rain forest ecology, and climate change biology. He is the author of two widely used conservation biology textbooks; local co-authors have helped to produce 36 translations of these books with local examples. For nine years, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biological Conservation, and served as the President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation. His research has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, National Geographic, and other publications, and he is often interviewed on National Public Radio. Primack also frequently gives talks and writes for the general public on issues of climate change and ecology, most recently the popular book Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau’s Woods.