Join a panel of Dartmouth professors for a discussion of their research at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. This is a hybrid event.  Join us in person in the Mayer Room or online via Zoom. No registration required in person; register for Zoom here. This program is co-sponsored by the Howe Library and the Hanover Conservancy.

Dartmouth Organic Farm hosts a variety of research projects and opportunities for experiential learning. Dr. Carl Renshaw, Professor of Earth Sciences, investigates how simple soil amendments can enhance carbon sequestration in agricultural lands. Dr. Theresa Ong, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, combines theory with empirical work in agricultural systems to understand how complex interactions between the environment, organisms and people ultimately influence food production and ecosystem stability. Join us to learn more about these research projects in detail and get an overview of the Farm from a member of Dartmouth Sustainability Office.

Carl Renshaw: I am a hydrologist with research interests in the response of rivers and streams to disturbance -- whether the disturbance is natural (e.g. large floods and climate change) or anthropogenic (e.g. dams, dam removal, and industrial and agricultural legacy contaminants). Our work is motivated by the fact that extreme precipitation events are now 67% more common in New England than they were just 30 years ago.  And New England has one of the highest densities of dams in the U.S. and is one of the leading regions of dam removal in the U.S. – with the number of dams removed year growing exponentially.  Despite the growing number of extreme floods and dam removals, the science of river restoration lags behind its application.  

Theresa Ong is an agroecologist who combines theory with empirical work in agricultural systems to understand how complex interactions between the environment, organisms and people ultimately influence food production and ecosystem stability. Her work focuses on how biocomplexity in terms of space, time and species diversity, influences the resilience of agricultural systems to both ecological and political perturbations. Specific interests include urban agriculture, agroforestry, biological control, critical transition theory, socio-ecological modeling, biocomplexity and spatio-temporal synchrony.