Geographer to speak on impacts of changing land use

How do changes in human use of land alter the natural environment? A prominent geographer who has explored this question around the globe will speak at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 28, at UW–Madison.

Eric Lambin, professor of geography and geology at Belgium’s University of Louvain, will lecture on the “Impact of Land Use Policies on Changes in Masai Mara Wildlife (Kenya): Analyzing Coupled Human-Environment Systems” at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St. The event is free and the public is welcome.

Lambin is one of the world’s leading researchers of the patterns and causes behind global land use change. He oversees land use and land cover change studies for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. He specializes in monitoring land cover changes through remote sensing technologies and in modeling land use changes and their impacts on people and the environment. He is particularly well known for innovative investigations of the causal relationships between social and land cover change.

Lambin’s presentation is the third in a series of Roy F. Weston Global Distinguished Sustainability Lectures this year at UW–Madison. Weston, an alumnus of the university, founded Weston Solutions, Inc., an international environmental and redevelopment firm.

The Weston lectures are sponsored by the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (part of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies), the department of civil and environmental engineering, the Center for World Affairs and the Global Economy, and the Global Environmental Studies Research Circle.

For more about the series, contact series coordinator Claus Moberg at ccmoberg@students.wisc.edu.