For Immediate Release
October 1, 2001

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – How mountain regions can provide a window onto the environmental effects of globalization will be the subject of an October 11 talk at Mount Holyoke College by a leading environmental researcher.

Lisa J. Graumlich, director of the Mountain Research Center at Montana State University, will speak at 7 PM in Gamble Auditorium. Her talk is sponsored by the Center for Environmental Literacy at Mount Holyoke. The event is free and open to the public.

Graumlich's position at the Mountain Research Center allows her to combine her careerlong interest in mountain regions with her concerns for sustainability. As a researcher, she uses tree-ring records to investigate how climate variation affects forests. Her work in the Sierra Nevada, in which she documented how climate events of the past 3,500 years caused rapid change in the structure of treeline forests, won the 1998 W.S. Cooper Award of the Ecological Society of America. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Parks Service, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Geographic Society, and the United States Geological Survey Biological Research Division.

The core mission of the Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL) at Mount Holyoke College is to engage all members of the College in the creation and maintenance of an environmentally sustainable college community.