World of Discovery series returns
The World of Discovery series is back at the Delaware Museum of Nature and Science.
This spring, the museum will welcome scientists from the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean and Environment and Delaware Sea Grant to give an overview of their scientific area of interest.
Wednesdays, March 8, April 12 and May 10 | 7 p.m.
Building the Future: Climate Change Adaptation Visions
Wednesday, April 12 | 7 p.m.
Dr. A.R. Siders is an assistant professor in the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences, a core faculty member of the Disaster Research Center and the co-director of UD’s Gerard J. Mangone Climate Change Science and Policy Hub. Siders’ research focuses on climate change adaptation governance, decision-making, and evaluation. Her recent projects have focused on managed retreat as an adaptation strategy and the social justice implications of coastal adaptation. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Siders combines approaches from hazards geography, law, digital humanities, and computational social science. She collaborates with consulting companies and non-profit organizations to integrate climate change adaptation into disaster risk reduction and resilience building. Her work spans several geographic regions, including infrastructure development in the Arctic, coastal defense in the United States, and urban resilience in Africa, Europe, and South-East Asia.
Siders previously served as a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. Navy, an associate director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, and an environmental fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. She is a research fellow with the Earth Systems Governance Program, Florida Earth Foundation, Global Center for Climate Resilience, Climigration Network, Ocean Visions, and Earthquakes and Megacities Initiative. She holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. She is originally from Duluth, Minnesota, and misses the cold.
Building the Future: Ocean Literacy
Wednesday, May 10 | 7 p.m.
David Christopher, marine education specialist with Delaware Sea Grant, will give a talk on Wednesday, May 10, giving a broad overview of ocean literacy. Ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean. The Ocean covers over 70% of our planet. It provides food for much of the world’s population, helps regulate the world’s climate, and provides most of the oxygen we breathe. However, the ocean is facing numerous challenges from pollution, marine debris, climate change, and more. Understanding the Ocean and its systems is important to addressing the challenges facing the ocean today and making informed choices about the Ocean in the future. In this session, participants will be introduced to the Ocean Literacy Principles and the Fundamental Concepts and learn how Ocean Literacy is being used to expand the public’s understanding of the Ocean.
Previous events:
Greenland’s Glacier-Driven Ocean Circulation
Wednesday, March 8 | 7 p.m.
Andreas Muenchow, professor in the University of Delaware School of Marine Science and Policy, will talk about his work researching the physics, climate, and earth history of Greenland where tidewater glaciers melt and retreat rapidly as they interact with a dynamic and warming ocean. Muenchow spent more than 365 days sailing the oceans off North-West Greenland over the last 25 years, most recently in 2021 with the Danish Navy and collaborators from Denmark. During his time aboard the Danish research vessel, Muenchow used data from NASA’s Ocean Melts Greenland initiative that dropped ocean probes from an airplane into the ice waters off coastal Greenland to measure ocean temperature and salinity. Muenchow will talk about how Greenland’s coastal glaciers melt, shrink, and add to the globally rising sea level, drive local ocean currents that move icebergs around, and how the glaciers’ melt is cold fresh water while the adjacent ocean is both salty and warm.
Muenchow is a sea-going physical oceanographer whose puzzles range from the physics of river discharges in Argentina, Siberia, and Delaware to ice-ocean interactions and glaciers off northern Greenland and Canada. He also dabbles in statistics, ocean color remote sensing, computer modeling, and writing.