About Trees, Landscapes, Climate, and What Comes Next
As we endure another season of heat waves and catastrophic wildfires, Professors Vivek Shandas and Joshua Howe will discuss the historic and contemporary relationships among Oregon's trees, rural and urban forests, and climate change.
Oregon's landscapes have been shaped by forces including evolution, climate, human behavior, and intersections of all three. The evolution of trees shaped ancient landscapes, which then were shaped anew through millennia of relationships with Indigenous people.
During the past two centuries, many of our relationships with trees and forests have been shaped by the social, economic, and environmental structures that drastically remade landscapes across Oregon. Today, those regional histories are intersecting with the global phenomenon of climate change, forcing all of us to contend, not only with what has led to the current reality, but also how our actions will shape the future.
Oregon Historical Society and World Forestry Center present the first in a two-part series about forests, climate, and history; the second program on November 25 will feature Indigenous knowledge holders and their relationship to cultural burning.
Vivek Shandas is Professor of Geography at Portland State University. He has contributed to over 100 publications, five books, and his research has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Scientific American, The Atlantic, Times of India, Le Monde, and many other media outlets. In 2023, he was appointed by the US Secretary of Agriculture to serve on the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council, and serves as a consultant to several public, private, and non-profit organizations. Vivek received his PhD in urban ecology from the University of Washington, and holds degrees in biology, economics, and environmental policy. During his spare time, he revels in the Earth's deep history, cosmology, and pines for wood-fired pizza and picnic tables.
Joshua Howe is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Environmental Studies Program at Reed College. His recent books, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming and Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming's Past explore the political history of climate change since the 1950s. His work on climate change and the Anthropocene has also appeared in Environmental History, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Climatic Change, Diplomatic History, and a number of edited volumes.
In his current work, Josh investigates the environmental legacies of American foreign policy decisions from the early 1950s through the second American war in Iraq, and his forthcoming co-authored book with Alexander Lemons, Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare is set to appear in February 2025. Josh holds a B.A. in history and creative writing from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. From 2010-2012, he served as a postdoctoral fellow with the National Science Foundation's John Tyndall Correspondence Project at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, and began his position at Reed in 2012.
