Boston Flora

Tag: Harvard

  • Wednesday, October 4, 7:00 pm – Natural Defense: Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food and Health

    Emily Monosson, PhD, Environmental Toxicologist, Writer, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will speak on Wednesday, October 4, 7:00–8:15pm at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum.

    For more than a century, we have relied on chemical cures to keep our bodies free from disease and our farms free from bugs and weeds. We rarely consider human and agricultural health together, but both are based on the same ecology, and both are being threatened by organisms that have evolved to resist our antibiotics and pesticides. Fortunately, scientists are finding new solutions that work with, rather than against, nature. Emily Monosson will speak about some of science’s most innovative strategies and the growing understanding of how to employ ecology for our own protection. Natural Defense: Enlisting Bugs and Germs to Protect Our Food and Health, Monosson’s newest book, will be available for purchase and signing. Fee: Free for Arboretum members and students, $5 nonmember. Register at http://my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Wednesday, September 27, 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – Plant Combinations for Beneficial Home Landscapes

    Is your garden and yard as beautiful and beneficial as possible? Are you interested in adding some pizazz for pollinators as well as for yourself? If so, then join this creative walk through the Leventritt Shrub and Vine garden at the Arnold Arboretum with horticulturist Jen Kettell on Wednesday, September 27 from 4 – 6 to consider different combinations of plants that will provide forage for bees, snacks for wildlife and humans, nesting habitat, and seasonal allure. Jen will show how to extend the appeal and bounty of your garden across the seasons by carefully selecting and combining trees, shrubs, and vines. Fee $25 Arboretum member; $30 nonmember. Register at my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277.

  • Thursday, September 14, 6:00 pm – Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory

    James T. Costa, Professor, Department of Biology, Western Carolina University Executive Director, Highlands Biological Station, University of North Carolina, will give a free lecture at Harvard Museum of Natural History’s Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, on Thursday, September 14 at 6 pm, as part of the Evolution Matters Lecture Series, supported by a generous gift from Drs. Herman and Joan Suit. Charles Darwin, iconic evolutionary biologist, was a naturalist with a passion for experiments. Sometimes quirky, always illuminating, Darwin’s experiments were an ever-present part of his home life, taking over his house, garden, and greenhouse, as well as surrounding meadows and woodlands, while often involving family, friends, and neighbors as research assistants. James Costa will discuss this inventive side of Darwin, detailed in his new book, Darwin’s Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory. Following the lecture, visit the museum galleries, where Harvard students and museum educators will demonstrate a selection of Darwin’s experiments. Free parking is available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.

  • Monday, April 30 – Thursday, May 10 – National Parks of the Southwest

    Join a small active group in spring of 2018 (April 30 – May 10) for a land tour of the National Parks of the Southwest. The Southwest is a land of scenes epic in scope. Begin in Tucson at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, a 98-acre tribute to the natural world comprising a zoo, botanical garden, natural history museum, aquarium, and art gallery. Encounter Sedona, famed for its towering red sandstone formations, on an open-air jeep tour. Visit the Grand Canyon, often considered one of the seven wonders of the natural world. Embark on a rafting excursion on the smooth waters of the Colorado River before traveling onto Navajo land to discover Upper Antelope Canyon. In southern Utah, hike in Bryce Canyon National Park, then spend a day amid the wondrous Zion National Park, one of the most diverse national parks in the United States. Study leader Fran Ulmer, Chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, will discuss America’s National Parks: Brief history and current issues; Western Water Wars: How does water scarcity and state laws complicate life in the West; and The Interconnectivity between American Indian Reservations: Culture and History. Pricing starts from $4,495 per person land only / $4,795 per person including air. Registration form is available online at www.alumni.harvard.edu, or call 800-422-1636 or 617-496-0806.

  • Wednesday, July 26, 5:30 pm – Global Environmental Threats: How Medical Models Can Help Us Understand Them

    On Wednesday, July 26 at 5:30 pm at the Polly Hill Arboretum, 809 State Road in West Tisbury, Dr. Eric Chivian, founder and former director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, will present a talk on recognizing and addressing global environmental threats. His lecture will also touch on Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, a topic of great importance to the Island community. In 1980, Dr. Chivian co-founded the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. During the past 26 years, he has worked to involve physicians in the United States and abroad in efforts to increase public understanding of the potential human health consequences of global environmental change, and in 2008 was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Chivian is the senior editor and author of Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, named “Best Biology Book of 2008” by Library Journal. He currently directs a new nonprofit, the Program for Preserving the Natural World. The lecture is co-sponsored with the Vineyard Conservation Society. $10 / $5 for PHA and VCS members.

  • Friday, May 5, 6:45 pm – Identifying Species at Risk from Climate Change and Considering Alternative Conservation Strategies

    The New England Botanical Club will hold its May meeting on Friday, May 5 at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, beginning at 6:45 pm.  Dr. Dov Sax, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Institute at Brown for Environment & Society, Brown University, will speak on Identifying Species at Risk from Climate Change and Considering Alternative Conservation Strategies.  The event is free and open to the public.  For more information visit http://rhodora.org.

  • Tuesday, February 21, 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm – Toward an Urban Ecology

    The Harvard Graduate School of Design will host a lecture by Kate Orff in Gund Hall, Piper Auditorium on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30.

    Kate Orff, RLA, is the founder of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design studio based in New York City, and author of Toward an Urban Ecology, a book about the practice. SCAPE re-conceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology. A range of participatory and science-based strategies will be discussed and shown in the lecture through the lens of the office’s work, featuring projects, collaborators, and design methods that advance urban ecological design.

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu. The event is free and open to the public.

  • Thursday, December 8, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape

    Trees, nature’s largest and longest-lived creations, play an extraordinarily important role in our cityscapes. These living landmarks define space, cool the air, and connect us to nature and our past. Today, four out of five Americans live in or near cities, surrounded by millions of trees that make up urban forests. But most of us take them for granted and know little of their natural history or civic virtues.

    On Thursday, December 8 in the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, author and historian Jill Jonnes will speak about the history of the tree in American cities over the course of the past two centuries, delving into the presidents, plant explorers, visionaries, citizen activists, scientists, and nurserymen whose arboreal passions have shaped and ornamented the nation’s cities. The Arboretum is located at 125 Arborway in Jamaica Plain, and the cost of the lecture is $10, free if a member of the Arnold Arboretum, or a student. To register visit www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu.

  • Wednesday, November 30, 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Six Ice Ages in One Billion Years, Climate Change, and Boston’s Earthquake Problem

    Our planet has experienced six ice ages in the last billion years. The first two at about 800 and 600 million years ago may have covered all or most of the earth in ice and is referred to as the “Snowball Earth.” The most recent Pleistocene ice age, perhaps not done, involved over 16 glacial cooling and warming events over the past 2.5 million years.

    Geologist James Lawford Anderson of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University will speak on Wednesday, November 30 from 7 – 8:30 at the Hunnewell Building of the Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, about various ice ages, today’s climate, and end his lecture with Boston’s glacially-influenced earthquake problem. $5, free for Arnold Arboretum members and students. Register at www.my.arboretum.harvard.edu or call 617-384-5277. Image from www.air-worldwide.com.

  • Thursday, November 17, 11:30 am – 2:00 pm – Designing Natures: For Pluralism of Ecology, Ethics and Aesthetics

    Fionn Byrne, lecturer in landscape architecture at Harvard GSD, focuses his research on the moral underpinnings of contemporary landscape architecture. As the recipient of the Harvard GSD’s 2015–16 Daniel Urban Kiley Teaching Fellowship in Landscape, he will speak about his work during the past year. The lecture will take place on Thursday, November 17, from 11:30 – 2 in the Harvard Graduate School of Design Gund building, 112 Stubbins. The lecture is free and open to the public.

    Byrne’s research and design interests depart from the convergence of technolo­gy and ecology; he is most intrigued by how velocity and information interact with biological systems.

    “The science of ecology is shaping a shared environmental ethic. The discipline speaks with unchallenged authority, claiming knowledge of the past and predicting the future. We are told that human accelerated climate change poses a threat to the continued existence of our species. Landscape architecture is the design discipline that has accepted the charge of integrating ecology into the urban. But beginning here with our very survival as the initial design problem, two undesirable propositions emerge:  The first is that any work of landscape architecture that does not slow the momentum of a warming planet can be said to be complicit in the downfall of our species. Thus, are we not compelled to act ecologically, to design with nature? The second is that even the most poorly designed space that includes plant material can be argued to be contributing to saving the planet. Thus, does ecology not trump aesthetics? If these propositions are indeed valid, how shall we respond?”

    Anyone requiring accessibility accommodations should contact the events office at (617) 496-2414 or events@gsd.harvard.edu.