Five experts to discuss changes in the world’s oceans

“The World’s Changing Oceans” will be the theme when five national experts give presentations this week at the annual Donnel Foster Hewett Lecture Series sponsored by the department of earth and environmental sciences.

The two-day conference begins at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 19) with a keynote lecture in Whitaker Auditorium by Richard A. Feely, a senior fellow with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington.

Feely, who is also a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography, will speak on “Ocean Acidification: A Global Problem with Local Impacts on Marine Ecosystems.”

Feeley’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion among all five invited experts.

The conference moves to Room 101 of the STEPS building on Friday (Nov. 20) for the remaining presentations.

At 9:30 a.m., Michael Arthur, professor of geosciences at Penn State University, will give a talk titled “Notions of Stinking Oceans—Causes and Consequences of Past Ocean Anoxia and Implications for the Future.”

At 10:45 a.m., Jonathan Payne, chair and associate professor of geosciences at Stanford University, will discuss “Geologically Distinctive Selectivity of the Emerging Mass Extinction in the Oceans.”

At 1:30 p.m., Bärbel Hönisch, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University, will discuss “Reconstructing Ocean Acidification in Earth History.”

At 2:45 p.m., Joanie Kleypas, a marine ecologist/geologist with the Climate and Global Dynamics Organization of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, will talk about “Bad Chemistry: Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Ecosystems.”

The conference will conclude at 4 p.m. with a second panel discussion among the experts.

The Hewett Lecture Series is supported by a bequest made to Lehigh by Donnel Foster Hewett, who earned a bachelor’s degree in metallurgy from Lehigh in 1902 and a Ph.D. from Yale University and then worked 60 years for the U.S. Geological Survey.