Join us for a Science Speaks Lecture from award-winning author Judith Schwartz. Her presentation will highlight the way understanding how landscapes “work” will help us address the many challenges we face. While discussions of climate focus on CO2, Judith looks at how the planet manages heat points to water: specifically, the phase changes of water from solid to liquid to gas and back, processes that consume or release tremendous amounts of energy. The good news here is that we have ample opportunity to restore the water cycle by how we interact with the land. She calls attention to infiltration, transpiration and condensation, and why these basic water processes are pivotal to climate. She introduces the biotic pump concept, which demonstrates how forests drive the movement of moisture around the world and how this affects temperature. Finally, she turns to the promise of ecosystem restoration. She’ll offer examples of healed landscapes she encountered in her reporting—from Zimbabwe and Mexico and beyond—to show how working with natural processes improves the water cycle and local cooling.

Judith D. Schwartz is an award-winning author who focuses on nature-inspired solutions to global challenges. Her book Cows Save the Planet helped spur the soil health movement and, more recently, The Reindeer Chronicles introduced readers to the climate-healing potential of ecosystem restoration. A graduate of Brown University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Judith lives and writes on the side of a mountain in southwestern Vermont.