Category: Recorded Event

2021-02-27 Ben Goldfarb, Dam It—How beavers shape the landscape

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Our featured speaker on Saturday Feb, 27th is Ben Goldfarb. In Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern conception of a healthy ecosystem is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America’s waterways. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: ponds drained, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of “Beaver Believers”—including scientists, ranchers, and passionate citizens—recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier than those without them. From the Nevada deserts to the Scottish highlands, Believers are hard at work restoring these industrious rodents to their former haunts. In his talk, Ben will discuss the history of this world-changing species; how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, and climate change; and how we can coexist with this vital but occasionally challenging species.

The Speaker

Ben Goldfarb is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter, winner of the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and named a best book of 2018 by the Washington Post. His environmental journalism has also appeared in the Atlantic, Science, The New York Times, Outside Magazine, High Country News, and many other publications. His next book, on the science of road ecology, will be published in 2022 by W.W. Norton & Company. Ben lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife, Elise, and his dog, Kit — which is, of course, what you call a baby beaver.

2021-01-09 Scott Burns: Tasting Terroir—Geologic and climate  influences on wine flavors in the Pacific NW (a talk and virtual tasting)

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The Lecture

To begin with, Scott will discuss the factors that affect wine flavors, concentrating on the climate and geology of the region.  Oregon and Washington are the number 3 and 2 states in number of wineries in the United States and just across the border, B.C. is the number 2 province in Canada for wine production.  Scott will concentrate on SE Washington and Willamette Valley in Oregon, but will also discuss NW Washington, SW Oregon, and British Columbia (including Vancouver Island which has a solid wine industry too and they are so close to the Olympic Peninsula.  This part will take about 40 minutes with some audience polling questions included.  The last half hour we will ask the different members of the audience (via zoom) what they are drinking and briefly will discuss their terroirs. Come prepared with something to drink – even beer has a terroir story!

The Tasting

We’ll have a virtual wine tasting after the lecture.  So select one of your favorite wines from wherever and taste away while Scott lectures. Afterwards, we’ll have a virtual Happy Hour when we can talk about specific wines, AVAs or wineries.

The Speaker

Scott just finished his 50th year of teaching at the university level.  He has taught in Switzerland, New Zealand, Washington, Colorado, and Louisiana before returning to Portland where he grew up and has been at Portland State for 30 years.  While as a student at Stanford in 1968, he started drinking wine in a fledgling little area called the Napa Valley.  He and Michael Machette both studied under Peter Birkeland at the University of  Colorado. Scott used to make wine in the early 1970’s with his Swiss students and turned that experience into his first published paper in the Journal of College Teaching in 1976.  With the help of his large collection of students, he unlocked the secrets of the different soils in the Willamette Valley that were producing different flavors in the early 1990’s.  He has also done research on terroir in southern Oregon and the Columbia Gorge.  He has been studying Canadian terroir for over 30 years, too.

2020-10-03 Terry Wallace — Gold: A Journey from the Big Bang to the Amazon (Zoom)

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Gold—A Journey from the Big Bang to the Amazon

Gold is one of the most fascinating of the 5,400 mineral species on Earth and no mineral (or metal) evokes more emotion, but gold also has an incredible scientific story: a gold nugget is made of material that was not born in our planet or even our solar system.

In this talk, world-renowned geophysicist Dr Terry Wallace discusses how the metal was created, how it came to be found on Earth, and the spell it has cast over humankind.  The lecture was broadcast via Zoom on Oct. 3, 2020; the recording is available above.

Terry C. Wallace Jr. was raised in Los Alamos, New Mexico and graduated from Los Alamos High School in 1974. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geophysics and mathematics from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, followed by a Master of Science and PhD in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

From 1983 to 2003, he was a professor at the University of Arizona, but moved back to Los Alamos in 2006 to become their Principal Associate Director for Science, Technology, and Engineering.  From 2011 to 2017, Wallace was the Laboratory’s Principal Associate Director for Global Security. He served as the 11th Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory until his retirement in 2018.