BOONE—Environmental preservation, sustainability and the fate of humanity is the common theme of the University Forum Distinguished Lecture Series beginning Sept. 22 at Appalachian State University. Speakers for the 2010-11 academic year are climate expert Dr. David Easterling, environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, conservation educator Dr. Gary Machlis, geomorphology expert Dr. David Montgomery, and nature and conservation writer Terry Tempest Williams.

David Easterling

Vandana Shiva

Gary Machlis

David Montgomery

Terry Tempest Williams

The lectures are sponsored by Appalachian’s College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Chancellor, University College, Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series, Joan Askew Vail Distinguished Lectureship Endowment, Morgan Lecture in the Sciences and Morgan Lecture Committee, and University Forum Committee (www.universityforum.appstate.edu).

Admission to all events is free.

Easterling will present the talk “Observed and Projected Climate Change” Wednesday, Sept. 22, at 8 p.m. in the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center’s Powers Hall.

Easterling is chief of the Scientific Services Division at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville. His research interests include the detection of climate change in the observed record, particularly changes in extreme climate events.

Easterling has authored or co-authored more than 60 research articles on climate change issues in journals such as Science, Nature and the Journal of Climate. He was a lead author for the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report and is the lead author for the IPCC’s fifth assessment report. Easterling is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Information about the National Climatic Data Center is available at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html.

Shiva will present the talk “Sustainability and the Global Food Crisis” Monday, Oct. 11, at 8 p.m. in Farthing Auditorium. Admission is free.

Shiva is a world-renowned Indian scientist, environmentalist and ecofeminist. Her work highlights the connection between human rights and protection of the environment. She is the author of “Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis,” “Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply” and “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development.”

Shiva was named “Hero for the Planet” by TIME magazine and awarded the Save the World Award and Sydney Peace Prize. She founded Navdanya, which has helped establish community seed banks, trained farmers in seed sovereignty and sustainable agriculture, and established the largest direct marketing fair trade organic network in India.

Additional information about Shiva and her work is at www.vandanashiva.org/.

Gary Machlis

Machlis will speak on “The Ecology of Hope and Devastation” Thursday, Nov. 4, at 8 p.m. in the Broyhill Inn and Conference Center’s Helen Powers Hall on campus. Admission is free.

Machlis is the science advisor to the director of the National Park Service and the first scientist appointed to this position.  He also is a professor of conservation at the University of Idaho.

Machlis was instrumental in developing the nation’s Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Units Network, which includes 13 federal agencies and more than 200 universities. He was awarded the Department of the Interior’s 2000 Conservation Service Award, one of the highest awards the department granted to private citizens.

He is the author of “The State of the World’s Parks,” the first systematic study of threats to protected areas around the world. More information about Machlis is online at

http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~gmachlis/.

David Montgomery

Montgomery will speak Tuesday, March 29, 2011, at 8 p.m. in Farthing Auditorium. His talk is titled “Soils and the Sustainability of Civilizations.”

Montgomery is a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, a MacArthur “Genius Award” Recipient (2007) as well as author of “Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations” and “King of Fish: The Thousand-Year Run of Salmon.”

His publications have explored how landslides and glacial erosion influence the height of mountains, how rivers originate and shape the landscape, and how human modification of river channels affects aquatic ecosystems, among other probing questions about the Earth’s surface.

More information about Montgomery is at http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/dwp/people/profile.php?name=montgomery–david.

Terry Tempest Williams

Williams will speak Monday, April 18, 2011, at 8 p.m. in Broyhill Inn and Conference Center’s Helen Powers Hall. “An Evening with Terry Tempest Williams: Conservationist and Nature Writer” will be facilitated by interviewer Joseph Bathanti, an award-winning author and a professor of creative writing at Appalachian. Her talk is co-sponsored by the Hughlene Bostian Frank Visiting Writers Series.

A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown the public how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice.

Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic “Refuge – An Unnatural History of Family and Place,” “An Unspoken Hunger – Stories from the Field,” “Desert Quartet,” “Leap,” “Red – Passion and Patience in the Desert” and “The Open Space of Democracy.”

Williams is the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah. Additional information is available at http://www.coyoteclan.com/.