Fisheries and Wildlife Seminar Series Kicks Off This Friday at Paul Smith's College

PAUL SMITHS, NY (02/19/2013)(readMedia)-- A wildlife science expert will give a talk Friday at Paul Smith's College on the interactions between climate change, forest habitat and biodiversity.

Chadwick Rittenhouse holds a doctorate in wildlife sciences from the University of Missouri and has conducted post-doctorate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rittenhouse's research uses theory and techniques from landscape ecology and wildlife ecology to understand the causes and consequences of environmental change on wildlife. His research focuses on the impacts of extreme weather, forest disturbance and land-cover change on bird communities as well as the impacts of future land-cover change on carbon dioxide removal and storage. He's also studied how climate change affects forestry operations and natural-resource agencies.

Rittenhouse's talk kicks off the spring 2013 Fisheries and Wildlife Seminar Series at Paul Smith's College. Three talks will follow this semester:

– Terese Hart and John Hart, Friday, March 29, "Discovery and Protection of Okapi, Bonobo and a New Species of Monkey in a Central Congolese Forest."

– Nicholas Gotelli, Friday, April 5, "Specimen-based modeling, stopping rules and the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker."

– Kenneth Nussear, Friday, April 19, "Conservation of the Threatened Desert Tortoise: a Multidisciplinary Approach."

The seminars, which are free and open to the public, take place from 10:10-11 a.m. in the Freer Auditorium.

For the past six years, Paul Smith's College has hosted a different professional fisheries and wildlife biologist each month as part of the series, which is sponsored by the Fisheries and Wildlife Science program.

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