Orrin Pilkey, an expert on
shorelines, rising seas and the greenhouse effect, will speak on “Rising Seas and Shifting Shores: The Mix of Politics and Science at the
Shoreline” on Thursday, March 4, at 7 p.m. in the Nott Memorial.
His talk, which is free and open
to the public, is sponsored by the College's Environmental Studies Program, the
Environmental Awareness Club and the Minerva Committee.
It is the second in a three-part lecture
series titled “Environmental Science and Public Policy.” Environmental advocate
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opened the series on Feb. 18. Richard Bopp,
a specialist in contaminant issues from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will
speak on April 22. (see details below).
Pilkey, the James B. Duke
Professor Emeritus at Duke University's
Nicholas School
of the Environment and Earth Sciences, has devoted much of his career to the
study of coastal geology, focusing primarily on the
science and policy issues of rising sea levels on barrier coasts caused by the greenhouse
effect.
As director of Duke's Program for
the Study of Developed Shorelines, he has studied beach replenishment and other
forms of shoreline stabilization, mitigation of hurricane damage on barriers
and principles of barrier island evolution in Colombia,
South America. He also works with the Department of
Marine Science at the University of Puerto Rico and with the U.S. Geological
Survey in Woods Hole, Mass. He has more than 150 technical publications to his
credit.
Pilkey has received numerous
awards for his professional contributions, including the Francis Shepard Medal
for Excellence in Marine Geology and the N.C. Wildlife Federation Conservation
Educator of the Year award. He also has won the George V. Cohee
Public Service Award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Pilkey is an honorary member of the Society for the Study of Sediments and has
been featured in The New York Times
Magazine, Esquire, Smithsonian, Chronicle
of Higher Education and National
Geographic.
On April 22, Richard Bopp, associate professor of earth and environmental
sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, will speak on “Mercury Deposition in New York and New Jersey:
From Geochemistry to Policy.”
Bopp
studied chemistry as an undergraduate at MIT, and has a Ph.D. in geology from Columbia
University. For the past 20 years
he has conducted research on various aspects of contaminant geochemistry in the
Hudson River, its tributaries, and other natural waters
of the Hudson Basin.
His research group at RPI uses
analysis of dated sediment cores to study the sources and distribution of PCBs,
pesticides, dioxins, PAHs, and trace metals. They
also study atmospheric deposition of contaminants, and in situ dechlorination of PCBs.
Bopp has
been involved in several major contaminant issues including the PCB problem in
the Hudson, dioxins in Newark
Bay, and disposal of contaminated
dredge spoils.