Years of research have convinced Emily W.B. Southgate '66 that current vegetation and floras can only be understood by integrating the cultural and natural history of a landscape with topography, geology and climate. Southgate, asumma cum laudegraduate of Denison, will present a lecture titled "Why History Matters for Ecology" at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (March 30) in Room 110 of Barney Davis Hall (200 South Road). The talk is free and open to the public.

Southgate is the author ofPeople and the Land Through Time: Linking Ecology and History(Yale University Press, 1997) andProtecting the New Jersey Pinelands: A New Direction in Land-Use Management(Rutgers University Press, 1988). She has studied landscapes ranging from the steep slopes of the Shawangunk Mountains on New York to streamside bogs in New Jersey and Serpentine Barrens in Pennsylvania to help land managers place landscapes in an historical context and to help guide land use decisions. "These studies have also revealed the underlying importance of history to basic ecological study of vegetation," says Southgate. "As a note of particular interest to Denisonians, one of the first studies of this type was done at Denison by my roommate, Trina Barnett, for her biology honors project, studying the history of the then newly acquired Denison Farm."

Southgate earned a master's degree in botany at Duke University (1970), and a master's in history (1974) and doctorate in botany (1979) at Rutgers University, where she served on the faculty from 1981 to 2000 as a research associate professor. She also has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and a National Science Foundation visiting professor at Duke. She is a member of the Ecological Society of America, the New Jersey Academy of Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Southgate's recent research projects have included a field study of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, the role of small national historical parks in natural resource protection for the National Park Service, and a study of the 18th-century vegetation of the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve in Rensselaerville, N.Y.

In addition to her public lecture, Southgate will visit an Honors class on Ecological History of North America and another on Women in Science.

Calendar Listing:

CALENDAR LISTING: Denison University, Granville -- Alumna Emily Southgate will speak on "People and the Land Through Time"; 7 p.m., Wednesday (March 30), Barney Davis Hall Room 110. Free and open to the public. Contact (740) 587-5757 to confirm information.

About Denison:

Denison University, founded in 1831, is an independent, residential liberal arts institution located in Granville, Ohio. A highly selective college enrolling 2,100 full-time undergraduate students from all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries, Denison is a place where innovative faculty and motivated students collaborate in rigorous scholarship, civic engagement and the cultivation of independent thinking.

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